Noam Chomsky - The United States and Israel

The United States & Israel was recorded when Noam Chomsky spoke in UCLA in 2011 about the Israel-Palestine conflict and how it relates to the USA. Please buy the podcast episode.

Few issues are more freighted than the U.S.-Israel relationship. Overwhelmingly, Democrats and Republicans give Israel “unwavering” support. Internationally, it’s a different story. Opposition to the U.S.-Israel alliance is mounting, particularly on Palestine. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the UN where scores of U.S. Security Council vetoes shield Israel from criticism. Can policy change? Noam Chomsky says, “It’s very much in our hands. There are plenty of things we can do to compel the U.S. to join the world on this issue.” If that happens, he concludes, “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can certainly be mitigated, not solved, but set on a basis of a much more favorable outcome.”

Noam Chomsky: Well, when I refer to Israel in these remarks, I generally have in mind the United States and Israel. It's important, particularly for Americans, to recognize that virtually everything that Israel does is with the decisive support, often direct participation, of the United States. That's economic, military, diplomatic, and not least ideological, the way the issues are framed in the United States, quite differently from elsewhere. And when Washington draws the line, Israel obeys.

Right now, Israel is facing a pre-severe crisis. In fact, a double crisis, a crisis of legitimation and a crisis of de-legitimation, those are the terms they use. And they're both matters of pretty serious concern. The issue of legitimation is coming to a head in the next few months at the United Nations.

Palestine is appealing to the UN to recognize Palestine as Palestinian state and also to admit Palestine to the United Nations. The U.S. administration is pulling every string it can to try to prevent it, but it looks as if they may do it. That could come up as early as September. If it comes to the Security Council, the United States will almost certainly veto it, as it usually does.

The most recent veto was three months ago, February, and that one was a kind of an interesting one. It actually got some attention. Most vetoes don't, for one thing, because there's so many of them. But it's rarely recognized how isolated the U.S. is of the UN on a whole range of issues. The last one did get some notice because it was a little unusual. The Obama administration vetoed a resolution affirming Obama's official policy. That got some notice. The resolution called for an end to settlement expansion in the West Bank, which theoretically is supposed to be Obama's policy, but the U.S. vetoed it. If you want to read something embarrassing, take a look at Ambassador Susan Rice's explanation. I thought she should have had the dignity to resign. Anyway, she gave an explanation.

The resolution also had another aspect. It declared the settlements in the West Bank illegal, and of course the goal on heights, nobody talks about it, declared that they were illegal. It's important to recognize that that's uncontroversial. In fact, Israel itself recognized that back in late 1967. Its highest legal authorities advised that the Attorney General agreed that any transfer of population into the occupied territories is in violation of the core principles of international humanitarian law, Geneva agreements.

Technically, the Israeli Supreme Court also recognizes it, but they find various ways around it. It's repeatedly been recognized by the Security Council most recently. A few years ago, by the International Court of Justice, the World Court, with the U.S. Justice in a separate declaration affirming the conclusion that this was technically about the separation wall affirming that any part of the separation wall, about 85%, that's there in order to protect Israeli settlements, is de facto in violation of international law because the settlements are illegal. So that part's not really controversial.

The other part of the resolution was reaffirming official U.S. policy, but Obama decided to veto it. The General Assembly in the coming session is a little different. The United States can't veto General Assembly resolutions, so it'll probably be another one of the familiar resolutions. Again, not just on Israel on a whole range of topics. Overwhelmingly, it rarely gets reported, but there's a vote after vote, which is, you know, 180 to 3 or something like that. The U.S. Israel, sometimes on Pacific Island or something like that, sometimes it seems worse, sometimes 150 to 1, the United States. So it'll probably happen again, it probably won't get reported.

Recognition of Palestine is already quite overwhelming, including important countries, like Brazil, which is the most respected influential country in the South, other South American countries and quite a few others. In fact, Palestine is now recognized by about over 100 countries, including about 85%, 90% of the world's population. That's far more than recognized Kosovo, but in the case of Kosovo, the admission to the United Nations is implemented because there's only one vote that counts in a world that's run by force and violence, not law. That's the one with the big stick. So the United States supports Kosovo, so therefore it's in whatever the world thinks, and the United States opposes Palestine, so it's out, whatever the world thinks. Well, those are important things to remember.

The United States, in fact, is a declining power for a lot of interesting reasons. Many of them internally self-inflicted, but it's happening, and it may not be able to hold back the tide forever, even though it's got Canada and a good part of Europe kind of totalling along politely, for the moment at least, in Israel, the government and the political commentators refer to the coming votes at the United Nations as a tsunami that they're going to have to do something about, and they're flailing around beside what they might do. It could be dangerous. It's an unpredictable, violent state with plenty of force behind it.

And it has a doctrine. It goes back to the 1950s. The doctrine back to the 1950s is that if we're pressed too far, we'll go crazy. Nistege is the Hebrew. Now, back in the 1950s, there weren't a lot of ways they could do that, but by the late 60s there are. It's a powerful nuclear state. They might do all kinds of things. I hate to think about it, but one possibility is another attack on Gaza. There's bombing of Iran. Who knows what they'll do. That's the legitimation of the tsunami. It took another step forward just a couple of days ago with the unification of Hamas and Fatah under Egyptian initiative. This example, the unification, is one of the many reasons why Israel and the United States are deeply concerned about what they correctly regard as the growing threat of democracy in the Arab world.

In this particular case, from 1991, the US and Israel have been dedicated to separating Gaza and the West Bank, breaking them apart. That's in direct violation to the Oslo Accords, which declare them to be a territorial unity. While the unification might impede and might even reverse this process of separation of the two parts of Palestine and even more dangerous, the unification might undermine Washington and Tel Aviv's dedicated efforts to prevent any political settlement, any diplomatic settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The terms of that settlement are very well understood, supported by essentially the entire world, including Iran, Hamas just reiterated its support for it virtually everyone's unified. It's been prevented for 35 years now by the United States primarily and of course by Israel. Again, important to recognize. I'll come back to it.

Well, that's basically the crisis of legitimation. There's also a crisis of delegitimation that Israel's facing, and that's the term that's used when you read, say, the Israeli press. That process of delegitimation was carried forward last December when Human Rights Watch, which is a pretty cautious conservative organization, Human Rights Watch, I'll quote, called on the United States to suspend financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of Israel spending in support of settlements, and also called on the U.S. to monitor contributions to Israel from tax-exempt U.S. organizations that violate international law, including prohibitions against discrimination. That casts a very wide net.

Amnesty International had already called for an arms embargo on Israel because it's using arms and U.S. arms in violation of international law, actually violation of U.S. law too. In the background, there's also a popular movement of divestment from anything involving the occupied territories in the United States crucially. That includes major U.S. corporations, like, say, Caterpillar, which provides the equipment for the destruction of the West Bank for illegal construction, also for straight murder, like the Rachel Corrie case, includes Motorola and other major corporation, which is providing electronic systems for the illegal separation wall, again, uncontroversial illegal, and for the settlements, all illegal, and many others. This is also extending beyond to broader boycotts. So that's the crisis of deligitimation alongside the crisis of legitimation. You can see why it's considered a tsunami, something very dangerous and might elicit a unpredictable and maybe a very dangerous response.

Well, there's a good reason why the United States fears democracy in the Arab world. To find out, why, all you have to do is to take a look at polls of Arab public opinion. They're certainly known to planners, but they're not published here. And I presume they're not published because the press doesn't want you to know what people think. I can't think of any other reason. I'm hearing a lot about what the Arab dictators say, but you don't hear about what the public thinks, and that's very revealing.

The polls, incidentally, are taken by the leading U.S. polling agencies, the most prestigious ones. They're released by major institutions, Brookings Institute, and so on. It's inconceivable that the media don't know about them, and planners certainly do. And they're interesting. So, for example, in Egypt, to the most important country in the Arab world, about 90 percent of the population regard the United States as their main enemy, the main threat that they face. Opposition to U.S. policy is so strong that about in Egypt, about 80 percent think the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons, not just nuclear energy, but nuclear weapons, maybe 10 percent, regarding Iran as a threat. And the figures are a little different country by country, but that's roughly the story throughout the Arab world. I say I can see why the U.S. and its allies, Israel, of course, and the Western allies, it cannot tolerate democracy in the Arab world, not authentic democracy, at least, the kind of democracy in which public opinion would have some impact on policy. If it did, the United States not only wouldn't control the region, which has been a primary goal for 70 years, but it would be driven out, and that's no small thing. It's a major concern. It's been to maintain control of the energy reserves of the world concentrated there.

So of course, the U.S. and its allies are very frightened of democracy in the Arab world. Of course, they talk about democracy, but Stalin talked about democracy, too. They can't possibly accept it. We'll do anything to block it. You should bear in mind that there's nothing new about this. This goes way back. And there's plenty of evidence about it. Plenty of documentation should be on the front pages of the newspapers. Certainly, should be taught in schools.

So let's go back, say, to the 1950s. In 1958, then classified, since then declassified, internal documents. President Eisenhower, '58, raised with his staff a problem that bothered him. He said he was concerned about what he called the campaign of hatred against us in the Arab world, and not by the governments, which are more or less supportive, but by the people and wanted a discussion of this. Well, right at that time, the National Security Council, which is the highest planning body, came out with a memorandum in which they analyzed that situation. They said, there's a perception in the Arab world that the United States supports dictatorships, harsh, brutal dictatorships, and blocks democracy and development, and that we do this because we want to maintain control of their energy resources. And it went on to say that the perception is more or less accurate, and furthermore, that's what we ought to be doing, because we want to control it and democracy would get in the way. That was in 1958.

Fast forward to 2001. It's plenty in between, but I'll skip it. You'll recall that right after 9-11, George W. Bush made a pathetic speech in which he asked why do they hate us? Eisenhower. His answer was, 'they hate our freedoms'. Well, that elicited a study by the Pentagon, which I don't think was recorded here, but they essentially reiterated what the National Security Council said in 1958. They said, they don't hate our freedoms. They hate our policies, and then they went through it, essentially the same policies that haven't changed. What they should have said is, we hate their freedoms, and we hate their freedoms for a really good reason. If they're free, we're not going to be able to carry out these policies, and we want them. In the background is another question, which is uncertain.

There is a treaty in Egypt, the Israel Treaty, 1979, which is also extremely unpopular in Egypt among the population. If you read about it here, there's a lot of concern that they may weaken it, or maybe even rescind it. The way it's described here is, literally, The New York Times, that the treaty is very important because it helps preserve stability in the region. That's a very interesting commentary, because what the treaty does is preserve instability in the region, and that's very clear and explicit. As soon as the treaty was signed, 1979, Israel recognized, it's obvious, that with a treaty with Egypt, the main Arab deterrent is out of the game. Egypt is the main, by far, the main military force, the only big organized military force in the region. So with the Arab deterrent gone, Israel's free to proceed with its policies elsewhere. They can expand the illegal settlement of the occupied territories, and critically, they can attack their northern neighbor. The invasion of Lebanon in 1982 killed maybe 20,000 people, devastated southern Lebanon, destroyed a large part of Beirut. The US was backing it all the way. Reagan thought it was great, but they backed it. However, it got to the point where it was becoming really an international scandal. So Reagan kind of ordered Israel to terminate it in mid-August 1982. A lot of horrors happened after that, like sub-Russia T-log. And Israel, of course, had to obey. They had no choices, even though the Manacham Begin, the prime minister, was talking at the time about how Hitler's hiding in his bunker, and we got to go after him. That's a yes or a r-foot. But the boss said, no, so they stopped.

In fact, the treaty contributes to instability in the region, but in the technical terms of US political discourse, that's stability. Equality means something that we like. Instability is something we don't like, literally. So for example, take a look at Iran. The big threat of Iran now is that they're destabilizing the region. How are they destabilizing it? They're trying to expand their influence into neighboring countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. When we invade and occupy and destroy those countries, that's stabilization. And they try to expand their influence into the neighboring countries, that's destabilization. And that makes perfect sense if you own the world. And that is the basic assumption of US culture. We own the world. If anybody's in the way, they're doing something wrong. By definition. This reaches such a level that it can even get things like this.

A couple of years ago, the former editor of Foreign Affairs, the establishment general, James Chase, a sensible liberal commentator, was writing about the US overthrow of the parliamentary regime in Chile, installation of a brutal dictatorship, you know, a shit dictatorship. And he literally said, reluctantly, we had to destabilize Chile in order to bring about stability. Nobody saw that as a contradiction. And they're right. It's not. We had to destabilize it in order to bring about our rule under a dictatorship, which is by definition stability. So that's what it means when the New York Times others tell us that the peace treaty is the foundation of stability in the region. It's the foundation of our rule of the region. But the Egyptians may not go along with that, so we'll see. The foundation of the US on these issues is quite significant and should be talked about in a free society.

So Texas-Iran again, Iran is the centerpiece of US policy and foreign policy journals. Iran is the major issue. The story is that Iran is isolated. The international community is isolating Iran. Who's the international community? Well, that's another technical term like stability. The international community is, of course, the United States. And anybody who happens to be going along with it, like Israel maybe, or some Marshall Islands, that's the international community. Literally. So take a look at Iran. The non-aligned countries, which is most of the world, have been vigorously supporting Iran's right to develop nuclear energy. They've been doing that for years, but they're not part of the international community. The Arab world that not only supports Iranian, the right to develop nuclear energy, they actually go so far as to support Iranian nuclear weapons. So the Arab world is not part of the world, the international community. The leading countries of the world, like again, Brazil, the most respected country, they strongly object to US policy on Iran. Turkey, the major regional power, they object to US policy. In fact, the international community, in this case, is the United States, Israel, Canada, large parts of Europe. That's the international community. That's pretty isolated.

And so, we might ask, what is this Iranian threat that we're so worried about? Actually, the Iranian government's a rotten government, and it's a terrible threat to its own population. But unfortunately, it's not unique in that regard, including our friends. And that's not the threat. We support governments, which are horrible threats to their population. So what's the threat? Well, actually, there's an authoritative answer to that, which, again, would be front page news and a free press.

Every year, the Pentagon and US intelligence provide an analysis of the global security situation to Congress. The last one, of course, had a section on the Iranian threat, big section. So what's the Iranian threat? They point out that the Iranian threat is not a military threat. Iranian military expenditures are very low, even by the standards of the region. I mean, miniscule is compared with the US, of course. They say that they go into Iranian military doctrine, and they say Iranian military doctrine is strictly defensive. It's designed to deter an invasion long enough so that diplomacy can set in. They say a very limited capacity to deploy force. They talk about the possibility of developing a nuclear capacity. They say if Iran is developing a nuclear capacity, it would be part of their deterrent strategy. Dittering the US is really attacked. And if any country needs a deterrent, it's Iran.

And if any country needs a deterrent, it's Iran. Just take a look at the geography. It's completely surrounded by the military bases of a hostile, violent superpower. And there's constantly under threat of attack in the violation of the UN Charter, if anyone cares about that. Nobody sane once Iran to have a nuclear weapon, I don't think, despite what our opinion is. But it's possible that they're developing a nuclear capability. We don't know. If so, yeah, it's likely part of the deterrent strategy. The chances they'd use it are almost zero. They'd be vaporized in 30 seconds if they mounted a missile. That's part of the threat, a deterrent. An Iranian deterrent would limit what the US and Israel can do. You know, if you've got to be careful if somebody can attack you with nuclear weapons. So it puts a limit on the US and Israeli aggressiveness and violence, and that's a threat. And the other threat, which they go into, is what I already mentioned. They're destabilizing the region by trying to expand the commercial, cultural, and other relations with their neighbors. Well, that's the Iranian threat. And on this, the US is quite isolated. The US can sort of tolerate with dismay Turkey's disobedience.

But there's another country that's much more worrisome. That's China. China doesn't take any nonsense. China is regarded as a great threat by the United States because they refuse to be pushed around. China is looked, we've been here for 3,000 years, sending off the barbarians. And okay, you want to make noises. That's your business. We're having plenty of tension. And that's really frightening. Like if you say the mafia don, and somebody says, I don't want to pay any attention to you, and you can't do anything about it, you're in trouble. And that's the problem with China. Not Chinese aggression. It's just disobedience, disdain, in fact. And if you look at the Washington pronouncements, there's a kind of a touch of desperation in them. So the State Department recently, on Iran, issued warnings to China saying if you want to be admitted into the international community, you know, then you have to meet your international responsibilities. And your international responsibilities are to obey U.S. sanctions. Well U.S. sanctions have no validity whatsoever, except that the U.S. is a powerful state and can smash people up. You know, China just laughs. They don't care if the U.S. is unhappy that they're not obeying meaningless U.S. sanctions. In fact, in this, as in many other cases, the U.S. is, most of the world's just refusing to go along. That's part of the reason why the U.S. is in fact a declining power, but there's much more to it than that, however. That's not the topic.

Let's return to Israel-Palestine specifically. I've mentioned a few crucial moments of recent history. The most important real turning point was 1967. It was in 1967 with the 1967 war that U.S.-Israel relations were solidified in pretty much their current form, a big change from before. And a new framework was established in the region. So what happened in 1967? Well, in the background was a war that was going on between radical Islamism and secular nationalism in the Arab world. Radical Islamism is centered in Saudi Arabia, the most extreme fundamentalist Arab state, Wahhabism, the most extreme form of Islam, the supporters of jihad, missionary movement, and so on. That's centered in Saudi Arabia. So that's radical Islam. That time, secular nationalism was centered in Egypt, masters Egypt. There was a war going on between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a proxy war in Yemen. And it was serious. The United States and Britain have traditionally supported radical Islam, almost always. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan supported the formation of Hamas. It's very consistent.

The U.S. has been very strong, written to a very strong supporter of radical Islamism. And there's a reason, because they considered a barrier to secular nationalism. And secular nationalism is the real threat, not only in the Middle East but everywhere. For example, secular nationalism might involve a move towards real independence and towards taking over the resources of the region and using them for its own population, instead of for the West and for the ruling gangsters. And that's a threat. Very consistently the U.S. and Britain have supported radical Islam, Israel too. In '67, Israel effectively destroyed secular nationalism. That was the main outcome of the war. And defended Saudi Arabia, defended radical Islam. That was a big plus for U.S. policy. And relations with Israel changed almost totally at that time, militarily, diplomatically, ideologically, all kinds of ways. All that continues.

But after that, 1970, the U.S. back dictatorship in Jordan was carrying out a real massacre of Palestinians. Black September, it was called. It looked for a while, as though Syria might intervene to prevent the massacre. The U.S. was pre-upset about that. At the U.S. at the time was completely bogged down in Southeast Asia to just invade Cambodia. You know, things were totally impossible. It called on Israel to react. Israel mobilized. It's quite formidable. Military forces, Syria backed off. Now that was considered a positive step in protecting the Hashemite monarchy and also the Saudi Arabian monarchy. And in fact, the U.S. aid to Israel quite ruephled, practically quadrupled that year. And so it continued. Nixon was president then. There was a Nixon doctrine, so called. And the Nixon doctrine was that the U.S. ought to have surrogate states carrying out the dirty work. Couldn't do everything by ourselves anymore. And in the Middle East, there had to be what were called cops on the beat. The cops on the beat, who keep the place under control, had to be non-arab. They do a better job killing Arabs. So Pakistan, Iran, which was then under the Shah, Turkey, Israel. They're the cops on the beat. East headquarters, of course, is in Washington. And there's a branch office in London. That's essentially the way we're on the region.

And Israel was joined as one of the cops on the beat at that time. And that stayed pretty much like that. It became critical in 1971. It was one of the most important moments in Israel's history, I think. In 1971, the president, the new president of Egypt, President Sadat, offered Israel a full peace treaty. Everything for the Palestinians. The quid pro quo was that Israel was to withdraw from Arab territory. And in fact, Egypt only cared about Egyptian territory. The occupied Sinai. Actually, Jordan came along a year later with a similar proposal withdraw from the West Bank. Well, Israel had a choice at that point, a crucial choice. And they made a fateful decision, I think. They could have had almost total security. A peace treaty with Egypt and Jordan, nothing for the Palestinians, Syrians out of the game. That's essentially as much security as you can get in this world. And they had to decide, do we want security or do we want expansion? And they decided they'd rather have expansion than security. Question is what would the US do as always? And the US went along with them. Kissinger supported that. This is what he called stalemate in his memoirs. No negotiations. Just force.

Well, that had a lot of consequences. One consequence that led to the '73 War, which is a very close thing for Israel. Since then, there's been essentially permanent choice of accepting expansion over security. Israel could have security right now, accepting the international consensus, but they want expansion. And now it's primarily the West Bank and the illegally annexed Golan Heights, which people don't talk about. The Security Council declared it illegal, but the US didn't care, so Israel does it. That remains the situation. Well, that was 71-72. In January 1976, the major Arab states, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan neighboring states, brought a resolution to the Security Council calling for a two-state settlement. By then the Palestinian issue had reached the international agenda. So they called for a two-state settlement on the international border, the recognized international border, so-called Green Line. And then the resolution added the standard wording of the major diplomatic documents. You went to 42. A recognition of the rights of every state in the region to live in peace and security within secure and recognized borders. It's basically the resolution.

The US vetoed a similar resolution in 1980. The Security Council's ruled out, shifted to the General Assembly, and then you get these annual votes with, you know, 51-3 and so on, year after year. Meanwhile, settlement expansion continued.

And the Oslo agreements came along in 1993. The total disaster for the Palestinians, the pace of settlement increased steadily right through the 90s, not to the peak year with year 2000, Clinton's last year. Gaza was closed off, separated from the West Bank in violation of the Oslo Treaty. That's been US-Israeli policy since.

I'll quote Amira Hass, one of Israel's leading journalists. She writes that the total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel's military superiority.

And meanwhile, repression intensified and Gaza was reduced to misery. Well in 2005, it came the famous disengagement. Israel had about 7,000 settlers illegally in Gaza using a large part of the meager resources and land, maybe 30, 40 percent, and defended by a big mass of the Israeli army. And General Sharon was prime minister of the most hawkish Israeli leader, recognized rationally, that just made no sense to keep small number of Jewish settlers in Gaza, which by then had been utterly devastated. It used to be a pretty wealthy place, but totally destroyed by then. So that was pointless. It made a lot more sense to take them out and send them to settle illegally in the West Bank, which Israel wants. So that was the disengagement, but you couldn't present it that way. So a farce was enacted. If Israel, they could have just done it very easily. They could have just said, you know, on August 1st, the IDF, the army, is going to withdraw from Gaza. And at that point, the 7,000 or 8,000 settlers would have climbed into the lorries that were provided for them and be taken from their illegally subsidized homes in Gaza, to their illegally subsidized homes in the West Bank. And that would have been the end of it. But that was no good. You had to have a PR operation.

So what they staged, staged is correct, was a confrontation. So you get front-page newspaper pictures, you know, of a little boy pleading with the army not to destroy his home and so on. And the cries of never again, you know, Holocaust. And it was such a transparent farce that it was ridiculed in Israel. In January 2006, the Palestinians did carry out a major crime. They had a free election, and they voted the wrong way. That's not allowed. And the U.S. reacted instantly. Go back and look at the newspapers. Within days, the United States announced harsh punishment of the Palestinians. Israel, too, of course. Europe kind of went along as usual.

In June 2007, Hamas, which won the election, there was a civil war in which Hamas drove out Fatah, the U.S. favorites. And that showed that they're just a gang of terrorists. What actually happened is not contested. The U.S. tried to initiate a military coup to overthrow the results of the elections. Now, that's standard operating procedure. U.S. does that all over the world. So they tried a military coup. It was run by a Fatah strongman, Mohammad Dahlan. The coup was preempted by Hamas, and they drove out Palestinian authority, and they did take over. Well, that's the Hamas crime. Not that they're nice people. That's a harsh, brutal organization. I wouldn't want to live under their rule, but that's a separate story. And of course, the attacks then escalated again, the siege tightened.

In June 2008, there was a truce call between Israel and Hamas. It's very important, actually. In 2008, there was a ceasefire, basically. So no Hamas rockets. Israel would call off the siege. Notice a siege is an act of war. Israel of all countries insists on that. Israel has launched two major wars, '56 and '67, on grounds that it was very partially blocked from the outside world through the Straits of Tehran. A total siege is, of course, an act of war. So the terms of the truce were, Israel would call off the siege Hamas would stop rockets. Well, Hamas lived up to that 100 percent. You can read it in the official U.S.-Israeli records. They conceded that during the period of the truce there wasn't a single Hamas rocket. Israel never accepted the truce, maintained the siege. That was June 2008.

In November 2008, the day of the U.S. election, you know, when everybody's paying attention to that, Israel invaded Gaza, sent it in troops, it killed half a dozen Hamas militants, and then rocket firing started again. And it went up and back. There were all the deaths as usual or Palestinian, but it did continue until December. In late December Hamas offered to renew the truce. The Israeli cabinet considered it and rejected it. They had a choice then. They could have had a truce, no rockets. They would have had to weaken the siege, but they decided to reject it and instead invaded Gaza with U.S. support. That was the December 2008, January 2009 invasion, which you know about or should.

The U.S. supported the invasion, as always. The U.S. weapons, U.S. intervened at the UN to prevent the ceasefire. Obama had been elected, but he hadn't taken office. He wouldn't say a thing about it. His line was, there's only one president, so I can't say anything. President Bush, he was saying things about all kinds of other topics like the Pakistani terrorism and so on, but couldn't say anything about this.

The attack was very carefully calibrated so that it would end hours before the inauguration. And it did. That saved Obama the necessity to say anything about it. Now he was the one president, so he could give the usual story about, let's forget about the past and look forward to the future and so on. Very convenient story for those who hold the clubs. Others don't like it much. Right after that, Obama gave his first and in fact only major speech on Israel-Palestine. It was an interesting one. He made one good move. He appointed George Mitchell as his negotiator. However, he immediately undercut it by making it clear that Mitchell would have no authority. The way he did that was clever, clever enough so that the press and commentators could pretend they didn't understand it. He said, there's now a great chance for peace. We ought to move forward for peace, you know, peace process. He says, there's a constructive plan on the table, the Arab Peace Plan. He said, finally the Arabs have come along with the plan. Actually, they came along with it in 1976, but let's forget about that.

But now the Arabs have come along with the plan and their plan calls for normalization of relations with Israel. And he called on the Arab states to move forward with their plan and normalize relations with Israel. You know, Obama is an intelligent, literate person. He can read Harvard degree and so on. He knows perfectly well that that's not what the plan said. The plan reiterated the international consensus on a two-state settlement and went even beyond it. It said, once that's established, we should move on to normalize relations with Israel. Well, Obama carefully omitted the guts of the plan and said normalize relations with Israel. Now, that's his way of telling the world we're not going to do anything. We're going to block peace, which is exactly what it meant and exactly what happened. Settlement expansion continued.

Obama claimed to be opposed to it, but he made it very clear to Israel that the opposition didn't mean anything. He was asked, as spokespeople were asked, at express conferences, are you going to do anything if Israel violates your demand and settlement expansion? He said, no, this is just symbolic. In other words, Mr. Netanyahu, go ahead and do whatever you like. Meanwhile, George Mitchell was kind of displaced by Dennis Ross. The Ross comes straight out of APAC. He was Clinton's negotiator. His position, as he says, is there's an asymmetry between Israel and Palestine. Israel has needs. Palestine only has wants, so therefore we can dismiss them. That's the neutral negotiator. He's now the leading adviser.

Then comes a series of steps up to the veto of the UN resolution in the last February. The Arab League, meanwhile, they do talk. They don't say much. They do say some things. Like a couple of months ago, they called for two no-fly zones. You heard about one of them. They called for a no-fly zone in Libya. And the big uproar about that great. No-fly zone in Libya. We got a bomb in Libya because the Arabs demanded it. They also, at the same time, called for a no-fly zone over Gaza. That no-fly zone over Gaza didn't conform to US policies, so therefore that one didn't exist.

What's gone to what the options are now? Well, and there's a lot of commentary about this, of course. And the way it's usually phrased is that there are really two options. The one is the two-state settlement, which has been the international consensus for 35 years. You can argue about this in that detail, but the base framework of it is understood. Now, that's one. And the other option that's proposed is that Israel should take it all over, take over the whole territory, and then there'll be a civil rights struggle, like kind of an anti-partite struggle. And actually, that's a position which is argued for by a lot of supporters of the Palestinians. They say that even better than two states because then we could have an anti-partite struggle. That's a real delusion. Those are not the two options. There's a third option. The third option is that Israel and the US will continue doing exactly what they're doing right now. What they're doing right now is implementing a version of what used to be called the Sharon plan after General Sharon, the big expansionist. And namely, Israel takes what it wants in the West Bank. And we know what it wants. Not a secret. It wants everything behind the separation wall, which is in fact an annexation wall. That's Arab land, water resources, the nice suburbs of the Jewish-Lomontell Aviv, and it's a big highway system connecting them and so on. So I'll take that. They'll take what's called Jerusalem, which is far bigger than anything that was ever called Jerusalem. They've illegally expanded Jerusalem, illegally annexed it over security council orders. So they'll take Jerusalem, which cuts out a big piece of the West Bank.

They'll take the Jordan Valley, from which Palestinians are being mostly evicted, and settlements are being set up. That imprisons what's left. It's separated from Gaza, so no outlet to the sea or anything like that. And then they're cutting the corridors through what's left. The big corridor that goes east of Greater Jerusalem goes almost to Jericho, essentially bisects the West Bank, a big town, Ma'ale Adumim, being built there, mostly under Clinton. That would start in the 70s. Another corridor up north, it goes through Ariel, another town. Another one above that, through Qudumim, still another town. It essentially breaks the remaining parts of the West Bank up into almost non-contiguous and unviable cantons, big infrastructure projects so that Israelis and American visitors can drive through the whole area, never even seeing a Palestinian, maybe some figure on a hill with a goat or something tourist office, probably funds them, looks good. But that's it.

And the Palestinian is going to just rot, not entirely. So like in Ramallah, the US and in fact Europe, mainly are funding kind of an island of affluence. So you live in Ramallah, nice restaurants, concerts and so on. That's a standard neo-colonial program. You go to any third world country, any miserable colony. You can find islands of affluence and glamour and so on beyond what we have. That's for the elites and that shuts them up. And meanwhile the rest just collapses. They can leave if they want. Well that's the third option. And that's the one that's being implemented. So we don't have to speculate about it. It's being implemented, you're paying for it. Or your parents if you're not old enough to pay taxes. And that's what's going on before our eyes. So that's the real option. And the choice is that or two states, there is no third option at this point. You can think in the longer term, maybe down the road there'll be something better. But there's got to be a first step. And the first step is two states. There's no other proposal. It's now argued very commonly that that's impossible. The settlements have gone so far that it's impossible.

Well, the world doesn't agree. That's why you had the February resolution world thinks it's possible. The Palestinians think it's possible. Both factions, Fatah and Hamas, which again reiterated its support for it. So I think there's reasons to believe it is possible. What's crucial is as always what the US will do. If the US joins the world, it'll be possible and Israel will go along because they don't have any choices. And we can do things about it. Like we can stop participating in the crimes. That's not a major unimaginable action. Stop participating in the crimes along with what say human rights watching Amnesty International and others are calling for. That would make a difference. It's very common now these days to draw analogies between Israel and South Africa.

There's one analogy between Israel and South Africa which is very real and never discussed probably because it's real. Around 1960, the South African nationalist government recognized that they're becoming an international pariah. And the South African foreign minister called in the American ambassador. We have the documents now. And he talked to them. He said, look, we're getting voted down by everyone in the UN. Everyone's opposed to us and so on. But you and I both know that there's only one vote in the UN. You're so as long as you're with us, we don't really care what the rest of the world thinks. And that's pretty much what happened. If you look through the following decades, by the 19th, a big anti-apartheid movement did develop. By around 1980, American corporations were pulling out the Congress was passing sanctions. The UN had already declared an embargo. Nobody was supporting apartheid. It was overwhelming opposition.

But the only person who was supporting apartheid was Ronald Reagan and his administration. They were strong supporters of apartheid. And they continued to support it in the framework of the war on terror. War on Terror was declared by Reagan, not Bush. They had to defend the African nationalist apartheid regime against the terrorist Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. And I made it literally in 1988, the White House declared the ANC, Mandela's ANC, to be one of the more notorious terrorist groups in the world. So of course we had to support the White nationalist regime. And that continued until around 1990. At that point, U.S. policy changed. Mandela was let out of Robbins Island. A couple of years later apartheid was gone. It's not a nice situation, a pretty rotten situation in many ways. But at least apartheid was dismantled, which is a big victory.

Now, that's not the only time that that's happened. And it's case after case. When the boss lays down the law, people have to do something. That's actually an optimistic conclusion for us. It means that it's really very much in our hands. If we take the right kinds of actions, if our own society is democratic enough so that popular opinion makes a difference, which it should be. If it isn't, we have a lot to worry about, not just this. Then there are plenty of things we can do to change that to compel the United States to join the world on this issue as well as others. And in that case, this is a repalistine. A conflict can be certainly mitigated, not solved, but mitigated and set on the basis to a much more favorable outcome.