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Al-Aqsa Intifada
By Noam Chomsky 



After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories, Prime
Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status of the
region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including 30
children, often by "excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in which
neither the lives of the security forces nor others were in imminent danger,
resulting in unlawful killings," Amnesty International concluded in a
detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the US. The ratio of Palestinian
to Israeli dead was then about 15-1, reflecting the resources of force
available.

Barak's plan was not given in detail, but the outlines are familiar: they
conform to the "final status map" presented by the US-Israel as the
basis for the Camp David negotiations that collapsed in July. This plan,
extending US-Israeli rejectionist proposals of earlier years, called for
cantonization of the territories that Israel had conquered in 1967, with
mechanisms to ensure that usable land and resources (primarily water) remain
largely in Israeli hands while the population is administered by a corrupt and
brutal Palestinian authority (PA), playing the role traditionally assigned to
indigenous collaborators under the several varieties of imperial rule: the Black
leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only the most obvious
analogue. In the West Bank, a northern canton is to include Nablus and other
Palestinian cities, a central canton is based in Ramallah, and a southern canton
in Bethlehem; Jericho is to remain isolated. Palestinians would be effectively
cut off from Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life. Similar arrangements are
likely in Gaza, with Israel keeping the southern coastal region and a small
settlement at Netzarim (the site of many of the recent atrocities), which is
hardly more than an excuse for a large military presence and roads splitting the
Strip below Gaza City. These proposals formalize the vast settlement and
construction programs that Israel has been conducting, thanks to munificent US
aid, with increasing energy since the US was able to implement its version of
the "peace process" after the Gulf war. 

For more on the negotiations and their background, see my July 25 commentary;
and for further background, the commentary by Alex and Stephen Shalom, Oct. 10.


The goal of the negotiations was to secure official PA adherence to this
project. Two months after they collapsed, the current phase of violence began.
Tensions, always high, were raised when the Barak government authorized a visit
by Ariel Sharon with 1000 police to the Muslim religious sites (Al-Aqsa) on a
Thursday (Sept. 28). Sharon is the very symbol of Israeli state terror and
aggression, with a rich record of atrocities going back to 1953. Sharon's
announced purpose was to demonstrate "Jewish sovereignty" over the
al-Aqsa compound, but as the veteran correspondent Graham Usher points out, the
"al-Aqsa intifada," as Palestinians call it, was not initiated by
Sharon's visit; rather, by the massive and intimidating police and military
presence that Barak introduced the following day, the day of prayers.
Predictably, that led to clashes as thousands of people streamed out of the
mosque, leaving 7 Palestinians dead and 200 wounded. Whatever Barak's
purpose, there could hardly have been a more efficient way to set the stage for
the shocking atrocities of the following weeks. 

The same can be said about the failed negotiations, which focused on Jerusalem,
a condition observed strictly by US commentary. Possibly Israeli sociologist
Baruch Kimmerling was exaggerating when he wrote that a solution to this problem
"could have been reached in five minutes," but he is right to say that
"by any diplomatic logic [it] should have been the easiest issue to solve
(Ha'aretz, Oct. 4). It is understandable that Clinton-Barak should want to
suppress what they are doing in the occupied territories, which is far more
important. Why did Arafat agree? Perhaps because he recognizes that the
leadership of the Arab states regard the Palestinians as a nuisance, and have
little problem with the Bantustan-style settlement, but cannot overlook
administration of the religious sites, fearing the reaction of their own
populations. Nothing could be better calculated to set off a confrontation with
religious overtones, the most ominous kind, as centuries of experience reveal. 

The primary innovation of Barak's new plan is that the US-Israeli demands
are to be imposed by direct force instead of coercive diplomacy, and in a
harsher form, to punish the victims who refused to concede politely. The
outlines are in basic accord with policies established informally in 1968 (the
Allon Plan), and variants that have been proposed since by both political
groupings (the Sharon Plan, the Labor government plans, and others). It is
important to recall that the policies have not only been proposed, but
implemented, with the support of the US. That support has been decisive since
1971, when Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic framework that it had
initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then pursued its unilateral
rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that followed, culminating in the
"Oslo process." Since all of this has been effectively vetoed from
history in the US, it takes a little work to discover the essential facts. They
are not controversial, only evaded. 

As noted, Barak's plan is a particularly harsh version of familiar
US-Israeli rejectionism. It calls for terminating electricity, water,
telecommunications, and other services that are doled out in meager rations to
the Palestinian population, who are now under virtual siege. It should be
recalled that independent development was ruthlessly barred by the military
regime from 1967, leaving the people in destitution and dependency, a process
that has worsened considerably during the US-run "Oslo process." One
reason is the "closures" regularly instituted, must brutally by the
more dovish Labor-based governments. As discussed by another outstanding
journalist, Amira Hass, this policy was initiated by the Rabin government
"years before Hamas had planned suicide attacks, [and] has been perfected
over the years, especially since the establishment of the Palestinian National
Authority." An efficient mechanism of strangulation and control, closure
has been accompanied by the importation of an essential commodity to replace the
cheap and exploited Palestinian labor on which much of the economy relies:
hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from around the world, many of them
victims of the "neoliberal reforms" of the recent years of
"globalization." Surviving in misery and without rights, they are
regularly described as a virtual slave labor force in the Israeli press. The
current Barak proposal is to extend this program, reducing still further the
prospects even for mere survival for the Palestinians. 

A major barrier to the program is the opposition of the Israeli business
community, which relies on a captive Palestinian market for some $2.5 billion in
annual exports, and has "forged links with Palestinian security
officials" and Arafat's "economic adviser, enabling them to carve
out monopolies with official PA consent" (Financial Times, Oct. 22; also
NYT, same day). They have also hoped to set up industrial zones in the
territories, transferring pollution and exploiting a cheap labor force in
maquiladora-style installations owned by Israeli enterprises and the Palestinian
elite, who are enriching themselves in the time-honored fashion. 

Barak's new proposals appear to be more of a warning than a plan, though
they are a natural extension of what has come before. Insofar as they are
implemented, they would extend the project of "invisible transfer"
that has been underway for many years, and that makes more sense than outright
"ethnic cleansing" (as we call the process when carried out by
official enemies). People compelled to abandon hope and offered no opportunities
for meaningful existence will drift elsewhere, if they have any chance to do so.
The plans, which have roots in traditional goals of the Zionist movement from
its origins (across the ideological spectrum), were articulated in internal
discussion by Israeli government Arabists in 1948 while outright ethnic
cleansing was underway: their expectation was that the refugees "would be
crushed" and "die," while "most of them would turn into
human dust and the waste of society, and join the most impoverished classes in
the Arab countries." Current plans, whether imposed by coercive diplomacy
or outright force, have similar goals. They are not unrealistic if they can rely
on the world-dominant power and its intellectual classes. 

The current situation is described accurately by Amira Hass, in Israel's
most prestigious daily (Ha'aretz, Oct. 18). Seven years after the
Declaration of Principles in September 1993 -- which foretold this outcome for
anyone who chose to see -- "Israel has security and administrative
control" of most of the West Bank and 20% of the Gaza Strip. It has been
able "to double the number of settlers in 10 years, to enlarge the
settlements, to continue its discriminatory policy of cutting back water quotas
for three million Palestinians, to prevent Palestinian development in most of
the area of the West Bank, and to seal an entire nation into restricted areas,
imprisoned in a network of bypass roads meant for Jews only. During these days
of strict internal restriction of movement in the West Bank, one can see how
carefully each road was planned: So that 200,000 Jews have freedom of movement,
about three million Palestinians are locked into their Bantustans until they
submit to Israeli demands. The bloodbath that has been going on for three weeks
is the natural outcome of seven years of lying and deception, just as the first
Intifada was the natural outcome of direct Israeli occupation." 

The settlement and construction programs continue, with US support, whoever may
be in office. On August 18, Ha'aretz noted that two governments -- Rabin
and Barak -- had declared that settlement was "frozen," in accord with
the dovish image preferred in the US and by much of the Israeli left. They made
use of the "freezing" to intensify settlement, including economic
inducements for the secular population, automatic grants for ultra-religious
settlers, and other devices, which can be carried out with little protest while
"the lesser of two evils" happens to be making the decisions, a
pattern hardly unfamiliar elsewhere. "There is freezing and there is
reality," the report observes caustically. The reality is that settlement
in the occupied territories has grown over four times as fast as in Israeli
population centers, continuing -- perhaps accelerating -- under Barak.
Settlement brings with it large infrastructure projects designed to integrate
much of the region within Israel, while leaving Palestinians isolated, apart
from "Palestinian roads" that are travelled at one's peril. 

Another journalist with an outstanding record, Danny Rubinstein, points out that
"readers of the Palestinian papers get the impression (and rightly so) that
activity in the settlements never stops. Israeli is constantly building,
expanding and reinforcing the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel is always grabbing homes and lands in areas beyond the 1967 lines - and
of course, this is all at the expense of the Palestinians, in order to limit
them, push them into a corner and then out. In other words, the goal is to
eventually dispossess them of their homeland and their capital, Jerusalem"
(Ha'aretz, October 23). 

Readers of the Israeli press, Rubinstein continues, are largely shielded from
the unwelcome facts, though not entirely so. In the US, it is far more important
for the population to be kept in ignorance, for obvious reasons: the economic
and military programs rely crucially on US support, which is domestically
unpopular and would be far more so if its purposes were known. 

To illustrate, on October 3, after a week of bitter fighting and killing, the
defense correspondent of Ha'aretz reported "the largest purchase of
military helicopters by the Israeli Air Force in a decade," an agreement
with the US to provide Israel with 35 Blackhawk military helicopters and spare
parts at a cost of $525 million, along with jet fuel, following the purchase
shortly before of patrol aircraft and Apache attack helicopters. These are
"the newest and most advanced multi-mission attack helicopters in the US
inventory," the Jerusalem Post adds. It would be unfair to say that those
providing the gifts cannot discover the fact. In a database search, David
Peterson found that they were reported in the Raleigh (North Carolina) press. 

The sale of military helicopters was condemned by Amnesty International (Oct.
19), because these "US-supplied helicopters have been used to violate the
human rights of Palestinians and Arab Israelis during the recent conflict in the
region." Surely that was anticipated, barring advanced cretinism. 

Israel has been condemned internationally (the US abstaining) for
"excessive use of force," in a "disproportionate reaction"
to Palestinian violence. That includes even rare condemnations by the ICRC,
specifically, for attacks on at least 18 Red Cross ambulances (NYT, Oct 4).
Israel's response is that it is being unfairly singled out for criticism.
The response is entirely accurate. Israel is employing official US doctrine,
known here as "the Powell doctrine," though it is of far more ancient
vintage, tracing back centuries: Use massive force in response to any perceived
threat. Official Israeli doctrine allows "the full use of weapons against
anyone who endangers lives and especially at anyone who shoots at our forces or
at Israelis" (Israeli military legal adviser Daniel Reisner, FT, Oct. 6).
Full use of force by a modern army includes tanks, helicopter gunships,
sharpshooters aiming at civilians (often children), etc. US weapons sales
"do not carry a stipulation that the weapons can't be used against
civilians," a Pentagon official said; he "acknowleged however that
anti-tank missiles and attack helicopters are not traditionally considered tools
for crowd control" -- except by those powerful enough to get away with it,
under the protective wings of the reigning superpower. "We cannot
second-guess an Israeli commander who calls in a Cobra (helicopter) gunship
because his troops are under attack," another US official said (Deutsche
Presse-Agentur, October 3). Accordingly, such killing machines must be provided
in an unceasing flow. 

It is not surprising that a US client state should adopt standard US military
doctrine, which has left a toll too awesome to record, including very recent
years. The US and Israel are, of course, not alone in adopting this doctrine,
and it is sometimes even condemned: namely, when adopted by enemies targeted for
destruction. A recent example is the response of Serbia when its territory (as
the US insists it is) was attacked by Albanian-based guerrillas, killing Serb
police and civilians and abducting civilians (including Albanians) with the
openly-announced intent of eliciting a "disproportionate response"
that would arouse Western indignation, then NATO military attack. Very rich
documentation from US, NATO, and other Western sources is now available, most of
it produced in an effort to justify the bombing. Assuming these sources to be
credible, we find that the Serbian response -- while doubtless
"disproportionate" and criminal, as alleged -- does not compare with
the standard resort to the same doctrine by the US and its clients, Israel
included. 

In the mainstream British press, we can at last read that "If Palestinians
were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led
by the United States [which is not accurate, unfortunately]. Its development and
settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the
indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country,
in self-administered `bantustans', with `whites' monopolising the
supply of water and electricity. And just as the black population was allowed
into South Africa's white areas in disgracefully under-resourced townships,
so Israel's treatment of Israeli Arabs - flagrantly discriminating against
them in housing and education spending - would be recognised as scandalous
too" (Observer, Guardian, Oct. 15). 

Such conclusions will come as no surprise to those whose vision has not been
constrained by the doctrinal blinders imposed for many years. It remains a major
task to remove them in the most important country. That is a prerequisite to any
constructive reaction to the mounting chaos and destruction, terrible enough
before our eyes, and with long-term implications that are not pleasant to
contemplate.