Chomsky on the Gaza Dungeon: "Those who Disobey the Master Must Suffer for this Misdeed"

By Noam Chomsky. From Making the Future, Occupations Interventions, Empire and Resistance. Available [HERE] 

July 16, 2007

The death of a nation is a rare and somber event. But the vision of a unified, independent Palestine threatens to be another casualty of a Hamas-Fatah civil war, stoked by Israel and its enabling ally the United States.

Last month's [June 2007] chaos may mark the begin­ning of the end of the Palestinian Authority. That might not be an altogether unfortunate development for Pales­tinians, given U.S.-Israeli programs of rendering it little more than a quisling regime to oversee these allies' utter rejection of a viable independent state.

The events in Gaza took place in a developing context. In January 2006, Palestinians voted in a carefully moni­tored election, pronounced to be free and fair by interna­tional observers, despite U.S.-Israeli efforts to swing the election toward their favorite, Palestinian Authority presi­dent Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But I lamas won a surprising victory.

The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of vot­ing the wrong way was severe. With U.S. backing, Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza, withheld funds it was le­gally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip.

The United States and Israel made sure that Hamas would not have a chance to govern. They rejected Hamas's call for a long-term cease-fire to allow for negotiations on a two-State settlement along the lines of an international consensus that Israel and United States have opposed, in virtual isolation, for more than thirty years, with rare and temporary departures.

Meanwhile Israel stepped up its programs of annexa­tion, dismemberment and imprisonment of the shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West Bank, always with U.S. backing despite occasional minor complaints, accompa­nied by the wink of an eye and munificent funding.

There is a standard operating procedure for over­throwing an unwanted government: Arm the military to prepare for a coup. Accordingly, Israel and its U.S. ally armed and trained Fatah to win bv force what it lost at the ballot box, with a military coup in Gaza.

A detailed and documented account by David Rose in Vanity Fair was confirmed by Norman Olsen, who served for twenty-six years in the Foreign Service, including four years working in the Gaza Strip and four years at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, and then moved on to become asso­ciate coordinator for countcrtcrrorism at the Department of State. Olsen and his son review the State Department efforts to ensure that their candidate, Abbas, would win in the January 2006 elections and, when these efforts failed, to incite a coup by Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan. But "Dahlan's thugs moved too soon," the Olsens write, and a Hamas preemptive strike undermined the coup attempt.

The United States also encouraged Abbas to amass power in his own hands, appropriate behavior in the eyes of Bush administration advocates of presidential dictatorship.

The strategy backfired,  but  Israel and  the United States quickly moved to turn the failed coup to their ben­efit. They now have a pretext for tightening the strangle­hold on the people of Gaza.

"To persist with such an approach under present cir­cumstances is indeed gcnocidal, and risks destroying an entire Palestinian community that is an integral part of an ethnic whole," writes international law scholar Richard Falk, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Israel-Palestine.

The approach is to be pursued unless Hamas meets the three conditions imposed by the "international community"—a technical term referring to the U.S. gov­ernment and whoever goes along with it. For Palestinians to he permitted to peek out of the walls of their Gaza dun­geon, Hamas must recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept past agreements, in particular, the Road Map of the Quartet (the United States, Russia, die European Union and the United Nations).

The hypocrisy is stunning. Obviously, the United States and Israel do not recognize Palestine or renounce violence. Nor do they accept past agreements. While Israel formally accepted the Road Map, it attached fourteen res­ervations that eviscerate it. To take just the first, Israel demanded that for the process to commence and con­tinue, the Palestinians must ensure full quiet, education for peace, cessation of incitement, dismantling of Hamas and other organizations, and other conditions; and even if they were to satisfy this virtually impossible demand, the Israeli cabinet proclaimed that "the road map will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians."

Israels rejection of the Road Map, with U.S. support, is unacceptable to the Western self-image, so it has been suppressed. The facts finally broke into the mainstream with Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, which elicited a torrent of abuse and desperate and dis­graceful efforts to discredit it, but no discussion of such revelations as these, as far as I could discover.

While now in a position to crush Gaza, Israel can also proceed, with U.S. backing, to implement its plans in the West Bank, expecting to have the tacit cooperation of Fatah leaders who will be rewarded for their capitulation. Among other steps, Israel began to release the funds—estimated at $600 million—that it had illegally frozen in reaction to the January 2006 election.

Ex-prime minister Tony Blair is now to ride to the rescue. To Lebanese political analyst Rami Khouri, "ap­pointing Tony Blair as special envoy for Arab-Israeli peace is something like appointing the Emperor Nero to be the chief fireman of Rome." Blair is the Quartet's envoy only in name. The Bush administration made it clear at once that he is Washington's envoy, with a very limited mandate. Secretary of State Rice (and President Bush) retain unilateral control over the important issues, while Blair would be permitted to deal only with problems of institution-building.

As for the short-term future, the best ease would be a two-state settlement, in accord with the international con­sensus. That is still by no means impossible. It is supported by virtually the entire world, including the majority of the U.S. population. It has come rather close, once, during the last month of Bill Clinton's presidency—the sole meaning­ful U.S. departure from extreme rejectionism during the past thirty years. In January 2001, the United States lent its support to the negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that nearly achieved such a settlement before they were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

In their final press conference, the Taba negotiators expressed hope that if they had been permitted to continue their joint work, a settlement could have been reached. The years since have seen many horrors, but the possibility remains. As for the likeliest scenario, it looks unpleasantly close to the worst case, but human affairs are not predict­able: Too much depends on will and choice