Obama on Israel-Palestine

Obama on Israel-Palestine
Noam Chomsky
chomsky.info, January 24, 2009
Barack
Obama is recognized to be a person of acute intelligence, a legal
scholar, careful with his choice of words. He deserves to be taken
seriously -- both what he says, and what he omits. Particularly
significant is his first substantive statement on foreign affairs, on
January 22, at the State Department, when introducing George Mitchell
to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace.
Mitchell is
to focus his attention on the Israel-Palestine problem, in the wake of
the recent US-Israeli invasion of Gaza. During the murderous assault,
Obama remained silent apart from a few platitudes, because, he said,
there is only one president -- a fact that did not silence him on many
other issues. His campaign did, however, repeat his statement that "if
missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do
everything in order to stop that." He was referring to Israeli
children, not the hundreds of Palestinian children being butchered by
US arms, about whom he could not speak, because there was only one
president.
On January 22, however, the one president was Barack
Obama, so he could speak freely about these matters -- avoiding,
however, the attack on Gaza, which had, conveniently, been called off
just before the inauguration.
Obama's talk emphasized his
commitment to a peaceful settlement. He left its contours vague, apart
from one specific proposal: "the Arab peace initiative," Obama said,
"contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts.
Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative's promise by
supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime
Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with
Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all."
Obama is not directly falsifying the Arab League proposal, but the carefully framed deceit is instructive.
The Arab League peace proposal does indeed call for normalization of relations with Israel -- in the context -- repeat, in the context
of a two-state settlement in terms of the longstanding international
consensus, which the US and Israel have blocked for over 30 years, in
international isolation, and still do. The core of the Arab League
proposal, as Obama and his Mideast advisers know very well, is its call
for a peaceful political settlement in these terms, which are
well-known, and recognized to be the only basis for the peaceful
settlement to which Obama professes to be committed. The omission of
that crucial fact can hardly be accidental, and signals clearly that
Obama envisions no departure from US rejectionism. His call for the
Arab states to act on a corollary to their proposal, while the US
ignores even the existence of its central content, which is the
precondition for the corollary, surpasses cynicism.
The most
significant acts to undermine a peaceful settlement are the daily
US-backed actions in the occupied territories, all recognized to be
criminal: taking over valuable land and resources and constructing what
the leading architect of the plan, Ariel Sharon, called "Bantustans"
for Palestinians -- an unfair comparison because the Bantustans were
far more viable than the fragments left to Palestinians under Sharon's
conception, now being realized. But the US and Israel even continue to
oppose a political settlement in words, most recently in December 2008,
when the US and Israel (and a few Pacific islands) voted against a UN
resolution supporting "the right of the Palestinian people to
self-determination" (passed 173 to 5, US-Israel opposed, with evasive
pretexts).
Obama had not one word to say about the settlement and
infrastructure developments in the West Bank, and the complex measures
to control Palestinian existence, designed to undermine the prospects
for a peaceful two-state settlement. His silence is a grim refutation
of his oratorical flourishes about how "I will sustain an active
commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and
security."
Also unmentioned is Israel's use of US arms in Gaza, in
violation not only of international but also US law. Or Washington's
shipment of new arms to Israel right at the peak of the US-Israeli
attack, surely not unknown to Obama's Middle East advisers.
Obama
was firm, however, that smuggling of arms to Gaza must be stopped. He
endorses the agreement of Condoleeza Rice and Israeli foreign minister
Tzipi Livni that the Egyptian-Gaza border must be closed -- a
remarkable exercise of imperial arrogance, as the Financial Times
observed: "as they stood in Washington congratulating each other, both
officials seemed oblivious to the fact that they were making a deal
about an illegal trade on someone else's border -- Egypt in this case.
The next day, an Egyptian official described the memorandum as
`fictional'." Egypt's objections were ignored.
Returning to
Obama's reference to the "constructive" Arab League proposal, as the
wording indicates, Obama persists in restricting support to the
defeated party in the January 2006 election, the only free election in
the Arab world, to which the US and Israel reacted, instantly and
overtly, by severely punishing Palestinians for opposing the will of
the masters. A minor technicality is that Abbas's term ran out on
January 9, and that Fayyad was appointed without confirmation by the
Palestinian parliament (many of them kidnapped and in Israeli prisons).
Ha'aretz describes Fayyad as "a strange bird in Palestinian politics.
On the one hand, he is the Palestinian politician most esteemed by
Israel and the West. However, on the other hand, he has no electoral
power whatsoever in Gaza or the West Bank." The report also notes
Fayyad's "close relationship with the Israeli establishment," notably
his friendship with Sharon's extremist adviser Dov Weiglass. Though
lacking popular support, he is regarded as competent and honest, not
the norm in the US-backed political sectors.
Obama's insistence
that only Abbas and Fayyad exist conforms to the consistent Western
contempt for democracy unless it is under control.
Obama provided
the usual reasons for ignoring the elected government led by Hamas. "To
be a genuine party to peace," Obama declared, "the quartet [US, EU,
Russia, UN] has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions:
recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past
agreements." Unmentioned, also as usual, is the inconvenient fact that
the US and Israel firmly reject all three conditions. In international
isolation, they bar a two-state settlement including a Palestinian
state; they of course do not renounce violence; and they reject the
quartet's central proposal, the "road map." Israel formally accepted
it, but with 14 reservations that effectively eliminate its contents
(tacitly backed by the US). It is the great merit of Jimmy Carter's
Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, to have brought these facts to public
attention for the first time -- and in the mainstream, the only time.
It
follows, by elementary reasoning, that neither the US nor Israel is a
"genuine party to peace." But that cannot be. It is not even a phrase
in the English language.
It is perhaps unfair to criticize Obama
for this further exercise of cynicism, because it is close to
universal, unlike his scrupulous evisceration of the core component of
the Arab League proposal, which is his own novel contribution.
Also
near universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist
organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all
Jews). Omitted are the inconvenient facts that the US-Israel are not
only dedicated to the destruction of any viable Palestinian state, but
are steadily implementing those policies. Or that unlike the two
rejectionist states, Hamas has called for a two-state settlement in
terms of the international consensus: publicly, repeatedly, explicitly.

Obama began his remarks by saying: "Let me be clear: America is
committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's
right to defend itself against legitimate threats."
There was
nothing about the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against
far more extreme threats, such as those occurring daily, with US
support, in the occupied territories. But that again is the norm.
Also
normal is the enunciation of the principle that Israel has the right to
defend itself. That is correct, but vacuous: so does everyone. But in
the context the cliche is worse than vacuous: it is more cynical
deceit.
The issue is not whether Israel has the right to defend
itself, like everyone else, but whether it has the right to do so by
force. No one, including Obama, believes that states enjoy a general
right to defend themselves by force: it is first necessary to
demonstrate that there are no peaceful alternatives that can be tried.
In this case, there surely are.
A narrow alternative would be for
Israel to abide by a cease-fire, for example, the cease-fire proposed
by Hamas political leader Khaled Mishal a few days before Israel
launched its attack on December 27. Mishal called for restoring the
2005 agreement. That agreement called for an end to violence and
uninterrupted opening of the borders, along with an Israeli guarantee
that goods and people could move freely between the two parts of
occupied Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The agreement was
rejected by the US and Israel a few months later, after the free
election of January 2006 turned out "the wrong way." There are many
other highly relevant cases.
The broader and more significant
alternative would be for the US and Israel to abandon their extreme
rejectionism, and join the rest of the world -- including the Arab
states and Hamas -- in supporting a two-state settlement in accord with
the international consensus. It should be noted that in the past 30
years there has been one departure from US-Israeli rejectionism: the
negotiations at Taba in January 2001, which appeared to be close to a
peaceful resolution when Israel prematurely called them off. It would
not, then, be outlandish for Obama to agree to join the world, even
within the framework of US policy, if he were interested in doing so.
In
short, Obama's forceful reiteration of Israel's right to defend itself
is another exercise of cynical deceit -- though, it must be admitted,
not unique to him, but virtually universal.
The deceit is
particularly striking in this case because the occasion was the
appointment of Mitchell as special envoy. Mitchell's primary
achievement was his leading role in the peaceful settlement in northern
Ireland. It called for an end to IRA terror and British violence.
Implicit is the recognition that while Britain had the right to defend
itself from terror, it had no right to do so by force, because there
was a peaceful alternative: recognition of the legitimate grievances of
the Irish Catholic community that were the roots of IRA terror. When
Britain adopted that sensible course, the terror ended. The
implications for Mitchell's mission with regard to Israel-Palestine are
so obvious that they need not be spelled out. And omission of them is,
again, a striking indication of the commitment of the Obama
administration to traditional US rejectionism and opposition to peace,
except on its extremist terms.
Obama also praised Jordan for its
"constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and
nurturing its relations with Israel" -- which contrasts strikingly with
US-Israeli refusal to deal with the freely elected government of
Palestine, while savagely punishing Palestinians for electing it with
pretexts which, as noted, do not withstand a moment's scrutiny. It is
true that Jordan joined the US in arming and training Palestinian
security forces, so that they could violently suppress any
manifestation of support for the miserable victims of US-Israeli
assault in Gaza, also arresting supporters of Hamas and the prominent
journalist Khaled Amayreh, while organizing their own demonstrations in
support of Abbas and Fatah, in which most participants "were civil
servants and school children who were instructed by the PA to attend
the rally," according to the Jerusalem Post. Our kind of democracy.
Obama
made one further substantive comment: "As part of a lasting cease-fire,
Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and
commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regimeÉ" He did
not, of course, mention that the US-Israel had rejected much the same
agreement after the January 2006 election, and that Israel had never
observed similar subsequent agreements on borders.
Also missing is
any reaction to Israel's announcement that it rejected the cease-fire
agreement, so that the prospects for it to be "lasting" are not
auspicious. As reported at once in the press, "Israeli Cabinet Minister
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who takes part in security deliberations, told
Army Radio on Thursday that Israel wouldn't let border crossings with
Gaza reopen without a deal to free [Gilad] Schalit" (AP, Jan 22);
ÔIsrael to keep Gaza crossings closed...An official said the
government planned to use the issue to bargain for the release of Gilad
Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by the Islamist group since 2006
(Financial Times, Jan. 23); "Earlier this week, Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni said that progress on Corporal Shalit's release
would be a precondition to opening up the border crossings that have
been mostly closed since Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the West
Bank-based Palestinian Authority in 2007" (Christian Science Monitor,
Jan. 23); "an Israeli official said there would be tough conditions for
any lifting of the blockade, which he linked with the release of Gilad
Shalit" (FT, Jan. 23); among many others.
Shalit's capture is a
prominent issue in the West, another indication of Hamas's criminality.
Whatever one thinks about it, it is uncontroversial that capture of a
soldier of an attacking army is far less of a crime than kidnapping of
civilians, exactly what Israeli forces did the day before the capture
of Shalit, invading Gaza city and kidnapping two brothers, then
spiriting them across the border where they disappeared into Israel's
prison complex. Unlike the much lesser case of Shalit, that crime was
virtually unreported and has been forgotten, along with Israel's
regular practice for decades of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on
the high seas and dispatching them to Israeli prisons, often held for
many years as hostages. But the capture of Shalit bars a cease-fire.
Obama's
State Department talk about the Middle East continued with "the
deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and PakistanÉ the
central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and
extremism." A few hours later, US planes attacked a remote village in
Afghanistan, intending to kill a Taliban commander. "Village elders,
though, told provincial officials there were no Taliban in the area,
which they described as a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds. Women
and children were among the 22 dead, they said, according to Hamididan
Abdul Rahmzai, the head of the provincial council" (LA Times, Jan. 24).

Afghan president Karzai's first message to Obama after he was
elected in November was a plea to end the bombing of Afghan civilians,
reiterated a few hours before Obama was sworn in. This was considered
as significant as Karzai's call for a timetable for departure of US and
other foreign forces. The rich and powerful have their
"responsibilities." Among them, the New York Times reported, is to
"provide security" in southern Afghanistan, where "the insurgency is
homegrown and self-sustaining." All familiar. From Pravda in the 1980s,
for example