% FROM THE NOAM CHOMSKY ARCHIVE
% http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu:/usr/tp0x/chomsky.html
% ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/cap/chomsky/
% Filename:    articles/chomsky.z.limited-war-lebanon
% Title:       ``Limited War'' in Lebanon
% Author:      Noam Chomsky
% Appeared-in: Z Magazine, September 1993
% Source:      Peacenet conference chomsky.views
% Keywords:    Israel, Lebanon, invasion
% Synopsis:    Account of Israel's July 1993 invasion of Lebanon
% See-also:    

                   ``LIMITED WAR'' IN LEBANON
                          Noam Chomsky
                   Z Magazine, September 1993


On July 25, Israel launched what the press described as its
``biggest military assault on Lebanon'' since the 1982 invasion.
The assault was provoked by guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops
in southern Lebanon, killing seven Israeli soldiers. By the time
a US-arranged cease fire took hold on July 31, about 125 Lebanese
were reported killed, along with three Syrians and three
Israelis, one a soldier in southern Lebanon, while about 500,000
people were driven from their homes according to reports from
Lebanon.

Journalists in Lebanon reported that 90 percent of the 80,000
inhabitants of Tyre joined the flood of refugees northwards.
Villages were deserted, with many casualties and destruction of
civilian dwellings by intensive bombardment. Nabatiye, with a
population of 60,000, was described as ``a ghost town'' by a
Lebanese reporter a day after the attack was launched.
Inhabitants described the bombings as even more intense and
destructive than during the Israeli invasions of 1978 and 1982.
Those who had not fled were running out of food and water but
were trapped in their villages, Mark Nicolson reported from
Nabatiye in the _Financial Times_, because ``any visible movement
inside or outside their houses is likely to attract the attention
of Israeli artillery spotters, who . . . were pounding shells
repeatedly and devastatingly into selected houses.'' Artillery
shells were hitting some villages at a rate of more than 10
rounds a minute at times, he reported, while Israeli jets roared
overhead, and in nearby Sidon, ``the main Hammoud hospital was
admitting new casualties every 15 minutes by late afternoon'' of
July 27. An Israeli Army spokesperson said that ``70 percent of
the village of Jibshit is totally destroyed, its inhabitants will
not recognize it.'' The goal is ``to wipe the villages from the
face of the earth,'' a senior officer added. In Tripoli, 40 miles
north of Beirut, a Palestinian refugee camp was attacked by
Israeli planes firing missiles. Israeli naval forces bombarded
coastal areas near Beirut and intercepted vessels approaching
Lebanese ports, though whether they also resumed their long-term
practice of kidnapping and killing passengers on the high seas is
not reported.

Israel and the UN observer force (UNIFIL) estimate that there
were 300--400 active guerrillas in south Lebanon, from the
Iranian-backed Hizbollah (Party of God). Eight were reported
killed by Lebanese sources. The reasons for the attack were
stated at once by Israel's chief of staff, General Ehud Barak. As
reported by Boston Globe correspondent Ethan Bronner, ``Barak
said a pattern had emerged that Israel considered intolerable:
Every time Hizbollah attacked an Israeli or pro-Israeli position
inside the security zone, Israel would fire back at the attackers
north of the zone. Then, the attackers would lob rockets at
civilians in northern Israel rather than at military targets
inside the zone as in the past.''

The ``security zone'' is a region of southern Lebanon that Israel
has occupied in one or another form since its 1978 invasion. In
recent years, it has been held by a terrorist mercenary army (the
South Lebanon Army of General Lahd) backed by Israeli military
forces. Any indigenous resistance to the rule of israel and its
proxies is considered ``terrorism,'' which Israel has a right to
counter by attacking Lebanon as it chooses (retaliation,
preemption, or whatever)---what General Barak chooses to call
``firing back at the attackers.'' But the resistance has no right
to retaliate by shelling northern Israel. These are the rules;
one goal of Israel's July attack was to enforce them.

The US government agrees that these are to be the operative
rules, while occasionally expressing qualms about the tactics
used to enforce them---meanwhile providing a huge flow of arms
and any required diplomatic support. Given Washington's stand, it
follows that the rules are unchallengeable background
assumptions, merely presupposed in reporting and commentary. It
is unnecessary to ask what the reaction would be if any state not
enjoying Washington's favor were to carry out comparable
atrocities, in gross violation of international law and the UN
Charter, were such trivialities considered relevant.

On July 30, Hizbollah announced that rocket attacks on northern
Israel could only end ``with the complete and permanent halt of
aggression against villages and civilians and the stopping of
Israeli attacks from air, land and sea on all Lebanese
territory.'' The statement ``received a testy response in
Jerusalem,'' the _New York Times_ reported. Reviewing the
Lebanese operation, the Cabinet did not even consider the
Hizbollah proposal, the spokesperson for the Rabin government
said. That is understandable. The rules are that Israel is
allowed to strike ``villages and civilians'' at will, anywhere,
if its occupying forces are attacked in southern Lebanon. Since
these rules are also accepted by Washington, the Hizbollah
statement was dismissed here as well.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher was highly praised by Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin for arranging the cease-fire, which,
according to Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, satisfied
all of Israel's demands, imposing its rules, thus granting the
expected rewards for ``benign aggression,'' the category that is
acceptable to the world ruler. The Israeli leaders informed the
press ``that the US-brokered deal included an understanding that
Israel and the southern Lebanese militia it sponsors would
continue to operate freely inside Israel's so-called security
zone'' in southern Lebanon, while rocketing of northern Israel
will cease (Bronner). There must be ``quiet, I stress, on both
sides of the border,'' Rabin emphasized, referring to the
``security zone.'' ``The status of the security zone has not
changed,'' Peres added, ``and if they try to plot against our
forces there, or the South Lebanon Army forces there, we will
take measures against them.'' The meaning is clear. The new
``understandings'' permit Israel to carry out military operations
at will anywhere in Lebanon, as in the past, if it perceives
``plots'' against its mercenary forces or its own military rule.
The tacit assumption, surely, is that in such an eventuality,
Israel will receive at worst a tap on the wrist accompanied with
a new flow of weapons.

The occupation is in violation of UN Security Council resolution
425 of March 1978, calling on Israel to withdraw immediately and
unconditionally from Lebanon. The government of Lebanon has
reiterated this demand, notably in February 1991 during the Gulf
conflict; apart from odd corners like this journal, the request
was drowned out by the self-congratulatory oratory about the
wondrous new order of law and justice. Israel is free to ignore
such minor annoyances as the Security Council and international
law thanks to the stance of its superpower patron, which is
powerful enough to reduce the UN to an instrument of its foreign
policy and to shape international law as it chooses, as was seen
once again in the ludicrous legal arguments put forth to justify
Clinton's bombing of Iraq in June.

For the same reason, Israel is free to reject the concept of
``terrorism'' held by the international community, but rejected
by the United States. The concept is spelled out in the major UN
General Assembly Resolution on terrorism (42/159, December 7,
1987). which condemns international terrorism and outlines
measures to combat the crime, with one proviso: ``that nothing in
the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to
self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the
Charter of the United Nations, of peoples forcibly deprived of
that right . . ., particularly peoples under colonial and racist
regimes and foreign occupation or other forms of colonial
domination, nor . . . the right of these peoples to struggle to
this end and to seek and receive support [in accordance with the
Charter and other principles of international law].'' The
Resolution passed 153--2, US and Israel opposed, Honduras alone
abstaining. Naturally, Washington denies any right to resist the
terror and oppression imposed by its clients.

US rejection of a General Assembly Resolution amounts to a veto,
and suffices to remove the issue from the realm of articulate
opinion, which reflexively adopts the US government position as
axiomatic. Accordingly, when the PLO endorsed all UN resolutions
on terrorism, Yasser Arafat was: denounced with derision across
the spectrum for his evasiveness on terror and his failure to
repeat George Shultz's ``magic words'' with appropriate humility;
as Shultz now reports in his much acclaimed apologia, _Turmoil
and Triumph_, he told Reagan in December 1988 that Arafat was
saying in one place `` `Unc, unc, unc,' and in another he was
saying, `cle, cle, cle,' but nowhere will he yet bring himself to
say `Uncle','' in the style expected of the lesser breeds.

Similarly, no one within the culture of respectability could
dream of questioning the doctrine that Iran's support for
resistance against foreign occupation, in accord with the Charter
and the near-unanimous Resolution on terrorism, is still further
evidence that it is a terrorist state---though Washington's
support for the illegal military occupation and its violence
within and beyond does not suggest that the US is a terrorist
state.


The Logic of Terror
 
At the outset of the operation, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
informed the Israeli parliament ``that he planned to flood Beirut
with refugees to press the Lebanese government to end the
attacks,'' the _Times_ reported: ``He said Israel would continue
to blast villages as long as Katyusha rockets slammed into
Israeli settlement towns in Galilee''---in retaliation against
Israeli attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon to counter
guerilla attacks in the ``security zone.'' Israel's plan, Army
spokesperson Michael Vromen stated, was to ``create pressure on
the Lebanese government [to rein in the Hizbollah guerrillas] by
having as many refugees as possible gathered around Beirut.'' The
``limited war'' is ``a noisy, frightening `message' in the words
of officials [in Tel Aviv] that the south will be uninhabitable
unless Hizbollah is stopped'' (Ethan Bronner). ``We believe that
the Lebanese government of Rafik Hariri, which has been promising
order and stability in Lebanon, will not allow this kind of chaos
to continue for very long,'' a senior Israeli official explained:
``Between the population of the south, the Lebanese government
and the Syrians, we are hoping Hizbollah will be stopped.'' As
the cease-fire was announced, Rabin stated that one of the goals
of the operation, now achieved, had been ``the use of firepower
to create conditions to allow understandings with the power
brokers who influence the terrorist organizations in Lebanon.''

A broader goal was outlined by Uri Lubrani, Israel's coordinator
of Lebanese policy. The purpose of the attack, he said, is to
induce the Lebanese government to demand Syrian permission to
negotiate directly with Israel. ``This is an attempt to drive
home a point,'' Lubrani said. ``Lebanese government, you claim
you want to exercise authority over all of Lebanese territory.
You want us to take you seriously in your negotiations. Go to
your masters [in Damascus] and tell them: 'Let me decide on my
own fate'.'' According to this conception, Israel is advancing
the ``peace process'' by attacking Lebanon. That is entirely
reasonable, if we understand the ``peace process'' to be a
program for imposing US-Israeli dominance over the region by a
mixture of violence and diplomacy with a gun visibly cocked---as
we should.

Doubtless Lebanon should be free from the Syrian domination that
was backed by George Bush as part of the payoff for Syria's
participation in his Gulf war. But by US-Israeli logic, Syria
should have the right to make much of Israel uninhabitable by
intensive bombardment, driving hundreds of thousands of refugees
to Tel Aviv, to impose its demands, including the demand that
Israel observe UN Security Council resolutions, among them, the
Council's order that Israel withdraw from Lebanon and rescind its
effective annexation of Syria's Golan Heights. That has yet to be
advocated here.

Lubrani's analysis was confirmed by Shimon Peres, describing the
``achievement'' of the Israeli operations as they ended.
Previously, he said, Lebanon had not accepted Israel's
``suggestion'' that it negotiate separately with Israel; now the
``suggestion'' is taken more seriously. Predictably, both he and
Rabin argued that Israel's violence had promoted the peace
process, not only by driving a wedge between Lebanon and Syria
but also by opening channels for further negotiations Israeli
officials elaborated. It follows that Israel should next bomb
Amman, thus contributing to peace by separating Jordan from the
other Arab parties and opening new channels of communication as
the US moves to terminate the assault by imposing Israel's
demands.

Naturally, Israel has always preferred separate arrangements with
much weaker neighbors who will succumb to its threats, leaving
the Palestinians in the lurch, along with Arab states whose
territory Israel occupies (in this case, Syria).

Lubrani was Israel's de facto Ambassador to Iran under the Shah,
then a leading figure in the sale of US arms to Iran via Israel
that began immediately after the Shah was overthrown. The purpose
of this project, he explained publicly in 1982, was to establish
contact with elements of the Iranian military who were
``determined, ruthless, cruel, . . . emotionally geared to the
possibility that they'd have to kill ten thousand people.'' Such
a force could take over Teheran, he said, and restore the
Israeli-Iranian alliance. A long-time Labor Party functionary,
Lubrani has lost none of the qualities that have endeared the
Party to left-liberal opinion for many years.

Israeli military officials confirmed yet another motive: to
adjoin to the ``security zone'' a broad strip of land to its
north that will be a no-man's land where Israel can strike
freely. In this way, Israel can extend ``the area of Lebanon it
controls without having to commit ground troops, a move that
would be unpopular with the Israeli public,'' Julian Ozanne
reports, noting that the pattern of bombardment also reveals
these objectives. Arab officials and press commentary suggest
further motives, Lamis Andoni reports: to pressure Syria to
accept Israel's plans for the Golan Heights, and to focus
regional and international attention against Iran, a major
current policy objective, as is not obscure (see Z magazine,
June). She also reports that ``Contrary to the Western view that
Hizbollah and its Iranian backers provoked the violence to
sabotage the peace process, Arabs argue that Israel has used the
incident as a cover to achieve its goals in Lebanon and to
pressure Syria to accept its terms for peace.''

The ``Western view''---more accurately, Washington's---is adopted
reflexively in US reporting and commentary, with the rarest of
exceptions, the usual pattern. Thus it is simply a Fact,
requiring no discussion or argument, that Hizbollah ``started the
latest round of fighting in an effort to sabotage the peace
negotiations and provoke a wider conflict'' (_New York Times_
Middle East specialist Elaine Sciolino). Or if one prefers, it is
a Fact that Syria, ``seeking to remind everyone that Damascus is
the source of all peace and war in the region, encouraged its
Party of God proxies to fire scores of rockets into northern
Israel.'' (_Times_ chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas
Friedman, omitting a few relevant stages). It could not be that
the guerrillas who were mobilized by Israeli aggression and
terror, as all concede, had some other interest: say, to drive
the occupying army out of their country and disperse its
terrorist mercenaries.


Shadows of the Past

To appreciate more fully what is happening, some historical
background is useful. Israel's 1978 invasion killed several
thousand Lebanese and Palestinians, drove hundreds of thousands
to the north, and left a region of the south under the control of
a murderous proxy force, Major Haddad's militia. Haddad's forces
were responsible for many atrocities, reported in Israel but not
here, one of the most notorious being the massacre of all
remaining inhabitants of the Lebanese town of Khiam during
Israel's 1978 invasion; the population had been reduced from
30,000 to 32 by Israeli bombing in earlier years. During its 1982
invasion, Israel selected Khiam as the site of its notorious
Ansar I prison camp, used since to punish people suspected of
anti-Israel activity in Lebanon, or their relatives, thus to
undermine any resistance to the South Lebanon Army. There is
ample evidence of hideous conditions and savage torture, reported
by the press in Israel and England, but not authenticated by the
Red Cross or any humanitarian organization because Israel refuses
to allow any access to the horror chamber run by its proxies
under its supervision.

The 1978 invasion was presented as retaliation for a Palestinian
terrorist attack, which originated far north of the zone Israel
invaded. In earlier years there had been a pattern of
cross-border attacks by the PLO from Lebanon into Israel (called
``terrorism'') and by Israel into Lebanon (called
``retaliation''). The scale was radically different, reflecting
the force available to the attackers and their susceptibility to
international reaction. Diplomats and UN officials in Beirut
estimated about 3,500 killed in Israeli raids in the early 1970s,
along with unknown numbers of Palestinian civilians, with
hundreds of thousands fleeing what was, in effect, a scorched
earth policy carried out with US support and equipment. PLO
actions, some of them atrocious acts of terror, took a vastly
lesser toll.

Often Israel's terrorist operations lacked any pretense of
retaliation. Thus in February 1973, Israeli airborne and
amphibious forces attacked Tripoli in northern Lebanon, killing
31 people (mainly civilians) and destroying classrooms, clinics,
and other buildings in a raid justified as preemptive. In
December 1975, Israeli warplanes bombed and strafed Palestinian
refugee camps and nearby villages, killing over 50 people, while
``Israeli officials stressed that the purpose of the action had
been preventive, not punitive,'' the _New York Times_ reported.
That particular attack, arguably, was indeed retaliation: against
the United Nations, which, two days earlier, had arranged for the
PLO to participate in a session to consider a proposal for a
two-state settlement advanced by the PLO and the Arab states,
supported by the world generally, angrily denounced by Israel,
and vetoed by the US---hence out of history, like other
unacceptable facts. One of the targets was Nabatiye, again
emptied today. Nabatiye was a frequent target, including an
attack in early November 1977, when the town was heavily shelled,
with no provocation, by Israeli batteries on both sides of the
border and Israeli-supported Lebanese Maronite forces; in the
ensuing exchange, over 70 people were killed, almost all
Lebanese. Egyptian President Sadat cited this Israeli-initiated
exchange, which threatened to lead to a major war, as a reason
for his offer to visit Jerusalem a few days later. By the time
Israel invaded in 1978, Nabatiye's population of 60,000 had been
reduced to 5,000, the remainder having fled ``mostly from fear of
the [Israeli] shelling,'' the _Jerusalem Post_ reported. Others
fared similarly.

As PLO cross-border terror declined in the mid- 1970s, Israel
intensified its own terror in Lebanon, with US compliance and
media silence, for the most part. Hundreds more civilians were
killed in Israeli attacks after the 1978 invasion, almost 1,000
by August 1979, the Lebanese government reported. ln July 1981,
Israel once again violated a cease-fire, attacking civilian
targets in Lebanon. Palestinian retaliation elicited heavy
Israeli bombing. Some 450 Arabs---nearly all Lebanese
civilians---were reported killed, along with six Jews. From these
events, all that remains in historical memory in the US is the
scene of Jewish civilians huddling in bomb shelters under attack
from PLO terrorists and their Katyushas.

The US mediated a cease-fire, ``and after mid-1981 the
Lebanese-Israeli border was quiet,'' William Quandt---a
well-known Middle East expert and NSC staffer during the Nixon
and Carter administrations---writes in his history of the ``peace
process.'' Quandt's version is the standard one. The ``border was
quiet'' in the sense that the PLO adhered to the cease-fire
rigorously while Israel continued its violations: bombing and
killing civilians, sinking fishing boats, violating Lebanese air
space thousands of times, and carrying out other provocations
designed to elicit some PLO reaction that could be used as a
pretext for the planned invasion. The border was ``quiet''
because the crossborder terror was all Israeli, and only Arabs
were being killed.

The occasional reports here reflected the common understanding.
Thus in April 1982, Israel bombed alleged PLO centers south of
Beirut, killing two dozen people, in retaliation for what it
called a PLO ``terrorist act'': an Israeli soldier had been
killed when his jeep struck a land-mine in illegally-occupied
southern Lebanon. The _ Washington Post_ sagely observed that
``this is not the moment for sermons to Israel. It is a moment
for respect for Israel's anguish---and for mourning the latest
victims of Israeli-Palestinian hostility.'' Typically, it is
Israel's anguish that we must respect when still more Arabs are
murdered by Israeli terror, and are thus to be seen as victims of
mutual hostility, no agent indicated.

The same attitudes prevail today. H.D.S. Greenway of the Boston
Globe, who reported the 1978 invasion graphically, now writes
that ``If shelling Lebanese villages, even at the cost of lives,
and driving civilian refugees north would secure Israel's border,
weaken Hizbollah, and promote peace, I would say go to it, as
would many Arabs and Israelis. But history has not been kind to
Israeli adventures in Lebanon. They have solved very little and
have almost always caused more problems,'' so the murder of
civilians, expulsion of hundreds of thousand of refugees, and
devastation of the south is a dubious proposition. Can one
imagine an article recommending a murderous and destructive
attack on Israel, if only it could secure Lebanon's border and
promote peace?

Having failed to elicit the desired PLO reaction, Israel simply
manufactured a pretext for its long-planned invasion of June
1982, claiming that it was in retaliation for an attempt to
assassinate the Israeli Ambassador to London; the attempt, as
Israel was aware, was carried out by the terrorist Abu Nidal
organization that had been at war with the PLO for years and did
not so much as have an office in Lebanon.

The official line in the US has been that ``Operation Peace for
Galilee---the Israeli invasion of Lebanon---was originally
undertaken'' to protect the civilian population from Palestinian
gunners, and that ``the rocket and shelling attacks on Israel's
northern border'' were ended by the operation, though ``If
rockets again rain down on Israel's northern border after all
that has been expended on Lebanon, the Israeli public will be
outraged'' (Thomas Friedman, _New York Times_, January--February
1985). This is plainly nonsense, given the history, which is not
challenged. Since it is now recognized that the rockets still
rain down, the story has been modified: ``Israel's two military
forays into Lebanon [1978, 1982] were military disasters that
failed to provide long-term security for Israel's northern
border'' (Elaine Sciolino, July 27, 1993). Security had been at
risk only as a result of Israel's unprovoked attacks from 1981,
and to a large extent before. The phrase ``military disaster''
does not refer to the killing of some 20,000 Lebanese and
Palestinians in 1982, overwhelmingly civilians, the destruction
of much of southern Lebanon and the capital city of Beirut, or
the terrible atrocities carried out by Israeli troops through the
mid-1980s; rather, to Israel's failure to impose the ``new
order'' it had proclaimed for Lebanon, and its inability to
maintain its occupation in full because of the casualties caused
by unanticipated resistance (``terror''), forcing it back to its
``security zone.''

The actual reasons for the 1982 invasion have never been
concealed in Israel, though they are rated ``X'' here. A few
weeks after the invasion began, Israel's leading academic
specialist on the Palestinians, Yehoshua Porath, pointed out that
the decision to invade ``flowed from the very fact that the
cease-fire had been observed'' by the PLO, a ``veritable
catastrophe'' for the Israeli government because ir endangered
the policy of evading a political settlement. The PLO was gaining
respectability thanks to its preference for negotiations over
terror. The Israeli government's hope, therefore, was to compel
``the stricken PLO'' to ``return to its earlier terrorism,'' thus
``undercutting the danger'' of negotiations. As Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir later stated, Israel went to war because there was
``a terrible danger. . . . Not so much a military one as a
political one.'' The invasion was intended to ``undermine the
position of the moderates within [the PLO] ranks'' and thus to
block'' the PLO `peace offensive' '' and ``to halt [the PLO's]
rise to political respectability'' (strategic analyst Avner
Yaniv); it should be called ``the war to safeguard the occupation
of the West Bank,'' having been motivated by Begin's ``fear of
the momentum of the peace process,'' according to Israeli Arabist
and former head of military intelligence Gen.  Yehoshaphat
Harkabi. US backing for Israel's aggression, including veto of
Security Council efforts to stop the slaughter, was presumably
based on the same reasoning.

The thinking behind Israel's terrorist operations in Lebanon is
also no secret. It was outlined, for example, by the respected
former Foreign Minister Abba Eban, considered a leading dove. He
was responding to a review by Menahem Begin of atrocities against
civilians carried out by the Labor governments in which Eban
served, a picture, according to Eban, ``of an Israel wantonly
inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on
civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which
neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name.'' Eban
does not contest the facts, but criticizes Begin for revealing
them. He also explains the reasons for Israel's wanton attacks:
``there was a rational prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that
affected populations would exert pressure for the cessation of
hostilities.''

In short, the civilian populations were to be held hostage under
the threat and exercise of extreme violence, until they compel
their governments to accept Israeli plans for the region. As we
have seen, the current assault is quite frankly predicated on the
same ``rational prospect.''

As for the civilian toll, the basic thinking goes back to the
founding fathers. In a January 1, 1948 diary entry, David
Ben-Gurion wrote: ``What is necessary is cruel and strong
reactions. We need precision in time, place and casualties. If we
know the family---[we must] strike mercilessly, women and
children included. Otherwise the reaction is inefficient. At the
place of action there is no need to distinguish between guilty
and innocent. Where there was no attack---we should not strike.''
The qualifications were quickly dropped, by Ben-Gurion in
particular, and by now have long been forgotten. Talk of ``purity
of arms'' or the ``benign occupation'' is disgraceful
apologetics, as widely recognized by now within Israel.


Safeguarding the Occupation

Harkabi's description of the 1982 invasion a ``the war to
safeguard the occupation of the West Bank'' might be applied to
Israel's July 1993 attack as well, though the intentions of the
Labor government and its US sponsor are not quite those of the
Likud government of 1982. The latter called for extension of
Israeli sovereignty over the occupied territories, though not
annexation, the distinction being left vague. The Labor
government, in contrast, calls for ``territorial compromise,''
its traditional position from the ``Allon plan'' of 1968.

The descendants of this plan vary somewhat in manner of
implementation, though the principles remain stable. Israel is to
maintain control over the resources and usable land of the
territories, including a wide and growing region called
``Jerusalem.'' Much of the indigenous population, which lacks
national rights, will eventually find its way to existing Arab
states (``transfer''), as the leading figures of the Zionist
movement always hoped and intended, while those who remain will
either be administered by Jordan, or allowed to run their own
local affairs. Israel will proceed with its plans for settling
and exploiting the territories, maintaining effective overall
control. Questions remain about just how to deal with the Golan
Heights, and over the disposition of Gaza, which has become such
a hellhole under Israeli occupation that there are now thoughts
of abandoning it---which means virtual destruction under current
conditions. The Arab states are to accept Israeli arrangements
and enter into a full peace treaty. The general project is
entitled ``land for peace'' or ``territorial compromise.''

Pursuing the project, Israel proceeds with its programs of
expansion and integration of the territories, now helped by US
loan guarantees in addition to the traditional huge subsidies,
which have no remote analogue in international affairs; the $10
billion loan guarantees, demanded with much passion for Russian
immigrants who were being forced to Israel by pressures on
Germany, the US, and others not to allow them a free choice, are
now being used for infrastructure and business investment, it is
frankly conceded---of course freeing funds for settlement in the
territories. And while Jewish settlement flourishes and expands,
the Palestinian inhabitants of the occupied territories sink into
misery and despair, the decline sharply accelerated by Rabin's
closure of the territories, which threatens even survival in a
region that has been denied any possibility of independent
development under the cruel military occupation. The ``closure,''
of course, observes the usual racist criteria: Jewish settlers in
the territories are exempt.

The July 1993 operations are intended to advance all of these
prospects, making it clear to the Arab states and Palestinians
that they have no choice but to yield to the force exercised by
Israel under US protection. All other possibilities have been
eliminated in the New World Order, in which there is no deterrent
to US force, no space for independent initiatives
(``neutralism,'' ``nonalignment''), no annoying impediments from
international institutions, and no thought of a European role in
what is recognized to be US turf.

Israel may well consider that these opportunities are now
enhanced. The Clinton administration is regarded as even more
extreme in rejection of Palestinian rights than the government of
Israel itself. Two weeks before the latest Israeli attacks, the
political correspondent of Hadashot, Amnon Barzilai, observed
that the US proposals presented to Israel and the Palestinians
break new ground in rejectionism: for the first time, they
stipulate that ``all the options will be left open,'' including
even ``the demand for full annexation of the territories'' under
``Israeli sovereignty.'' In this respect, Clinton goes far beyond
the governing Labor Party, ``which never demanded that all the
options be kept open,'' insisting rather on ``territorial
compromise.'' The US initiative can only ``strengthen the
suspicion among the Palestinians that there is reason to fear an
Israeli conspiracy with American support,'' though in reality,
neither the United States nor the Israeli political blocs, Labor
or Likud, would consider true annexation of the territories with
the enormous costs that would entail, such as extending at least
minimal social, economic, and political rights to their
inhabitants.

US policy has always been strictly rejectionist, similar to that
of Hizbollah, except that Washington denies national rights to
Palestinians, not Jews. Again, the modalities have varied over
the years, though basic assumptions have been stable, as has the
doctrinal framework: thus, Washington is invariably seeking peace
and justice, pursuing the ``peace process,'' a term of newspeak
that refers to Washington's efforts to impose its own
rejectionist goals, excluding all diplomatic initiatives that
conflict with them. In its recent version, the ``peace process''
has been based on the Baker-Shamir-Peres consensus of 1989, which
barred any ``additional Palestinian state in the Gaza district
and in the area between Israel and Jordan'' (Jordan already being
a ``Palestinian state'') or any negotiations with the PLO, and
declared that ``There will be no change in the status of Judea,
Samaria and Gaza other than in accordance with the basic
guidelines of the Government'' of Israel, which reject
Palestinian self-determination. With these ``basic principles''
in place, there are to be ``free elections'' under Israeli
military occupation to yield ``autonomy''---what Israeli
journalist Danny Rubinstein, who has been covering the occupied
territories with distinction for years, calls ``the autonomy of a
POW camp.''

In the aftermath of the Gulf conflict, there were new
opportunities for advancing this project as well as new urgency
in pursuing it. The opportunities derived from the forceful
assertion of unilateral US power over the region, the
demoralization of the Arab world (and the Third World generally),
the abdication of Europe. and the collapse of the Soviet Union,
leaving Russia as an even more loyal client than Britain,
perhaps. The urgency arose from the need to concoct some
``triumph'' to conceal the disastrous consequences of the US-UK
war in the Gulf, with Saddam firmly in power cheerfully
slaughtering Shiites and Kurds while Stormin' Norman and the
heroic George Bush stood quietly aside, US corporations were
beginning to rake in huge contracts for reconstruction of the
ruins, and ``an excess of more than 46,900 children died [in
Iraq] between January and August 1991'' from the effects of the
war and the sanctions, according to a study conducted by leading
US and foreign medical specialists reported in the New England
Journal of Medicine, far more since.

Something had to be done. Accordingly, a new ``peace initiative''
was declared with much fanfare amidst praise for the noble
President who ``has made very clear that he wants to breathe
light into that hypothetical creature, the Middle East peace
process'' (Anthony Lewis). The story since should surprise no one
who looked beyond the impressive chorus of self-praise to the
not-very-obscure facts (see _Z Magazine_, October, December,
1991).

The US still remains committed to the ``peace process'' it
initiated, not surprisingly, given its framework. We therefore
have even more powerful reasons for recognizing that ``this is
not the moment for sermons to Israel,'' rather for ``respect for
Israel's anguish---and for mourning the latest victims of
Israel-Palestinian hostility.'' Sermons---let alone any other
reaction---would only impede the ``peace process.'' Indeed the
``peace process,'' apologists argue, has been advanced by Rabin's
violence, not only for the powerful reasons given by Israeli
authorities but also because it enables Rabin to fend off
criticism from the right as he strides towards ``territorial
compromise.''

Rabin's assault on Lebanon is thus much like Clinton's bombing of
Iraq a month earlier in retaliation for an alleged threat to
assassinate a former US leader, a crime so heinous that our pure
sensibility can scarcely even imagine how it could be conceived
by some distorted and primitive mind. Clinton's brave act, we
were informed, relieved the fears that the old draft dodger might
be less prone to violence than his predecessors, and refuted the
dangerous belief that ``American foreign policy in the post-Cold
War era was destined to be forever hogtied by the constraints of
multilateralism'' (_Washington Post_)---that is, by international
law and the UN Charter.

Welcome to the New World Order.