Chomsky today had an article published in the Melbourne Age,w which I thought might interest people.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/state/2001/08/23/FFXYOIMKOQC.html

Israel, the cruel occupier, must get out


By NOAM CHOMSKY
Thursday 23 August 2001

'What we feared has come true," Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling writes in Israel's
leading newspaper. Jews and Palestinians are "regressing to superstitious tribalism - war
appears an unavoidable fate", an "evil colonial" war.

There is, of course, no symmetry between the "ethno-national groups" regressing to
tribalism. The conflict is centred in territories that have been under harsh military
occupation since 1967. The conqueror is a major armed power, acting with massive
military, economic and diplomatic support from the global superpower. Its subjects are
alone and defenceless, many barely surviving in miserable camps.

The cruelty of the occupation has been sharply condemned by international and Israeli
human-rights groups for many years. The purpose of the terror, economic strangulation
and daily humiliation is not obscure. It was articulated in the early years of the
occupation by Moshe Dayan, one of the Israeli leaders most sympathetic to the
Palestinian plight, who advised his Labor Party associates to tell the Palestinians that
"you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave".

The Oslo "peace process" changed the modalities, but not the basic concept. Historian
Shlomo Ben-Ami, a dove in the US-Israeli spectrum, wrote that the intent was to impose
on the Palestinians "almost total dependence on Israel" in a "colonial situation" that was
to be "permanent". He soon became the architect of the Ehud Barak government
proposals, virtually identical to Bill Clinton's final plan.

These proposals were highly praised in US commentary; the Palestinians were blamed
for their failure and the subsequent violence.

That presentation "was a fraud perpetrated on Israeli - and international - public
opinion", Kimmerling writes accurately. He continues that a look at a map suffices to
show that the Clinton-Barak plans "presented to the Palestinians impossible terms".
Crucially, Israel retained "two settlement blocs that in effect cut the West Bank into
pieces". The Palestinian enclaves also are effectively separated from the centre of
Palestinian life in Jerusalem; the Gaza Strip remains isolated, its population virtually
imprisoned.

Israeli settlement in the territories doubled during the years of the "peace process",
increasing under Barak, who bequeathed the new government of Ariel Sharon "a
surprising legacy", the Israeli press reported as the transition took place early this year:
"The highest number of housing starts in the territories" since Sharon supervised
settlements in 1992, before Oslo. The facts on the ground are the living reality for the
desperate population.

The nature of permanent dependency was underscored by Israel's High Court of Justice
in November 1999 when it rejected yet another Palestinian petition opposing further
expansion of the (Jewish) city of Maale Adumim established to the east of Jerusalem,
virtually partitioning the West Bank.

The court suggested that "some good for the residents of neighboring (Palestinian
villages) might spring from the economic and cultural development" of the all-Jewish
city. While they try to survive without water to drink or fields to cultivate, the people
whose lands have been taken can enjoy the sight of the ample housing, green lawns,
swimming pools and other amenities of the heavily subsidised Israeli settlements.

Immediately after World War II, the Geneva Conventions were adopted to bar repetition
of Nazi crimes, including transfer of population to occupied territories or actions that
harm civilians. As a so-called high contracting party, the US is obligated "to ensure
respect" for the conventions.

With Israel alone opposed, the United Nations has repeatedly declared the conventions
applicable to the occupied territories; the US abstains from these votes, unwilling to take
a public stand in violation of fundamental principles of international law, which require it
to act to prevent settlement and expropriation, attacks on civilians with US-supplied
helicopters, collective punishment and all other repressive measures used by the
occupying forces. Washington has continued to provide the means to implement these
practices, refusing even to allow observers who might reduce violence and protect the
victims.

For 25 years, there has been a near-unanimous international consensus on the terms of
political settlement: a full peace treaty with establishment of a Palestinian state after
Israeli withdrawal, an outcome that enjoys wide support even within Israel. It has been
blocked by Washington ever since its veto of a UN Security Council resolution to that
effect in 1976.

It is far from an ideal solution. But the likely current alternatives are far more ugly.

Philosopher and social critic Noam Chomsky recently wrote 'A New Generation
Draws the Line: Kosovo, East Timor, and the Variable Standards of the West'.