THE MIDDLE EAST LIE
By Noam Chomsky
Lies Of Our Times Posted on November 27, 2011
In a column entitled “The Middle East Lie” (New York Times, March 21, 1989), former Times Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal complains that “the world no longer sees the reality of the Middle East” and is thus pressuring Israel to negotiate with the PLO. This “blunder” would lead to “another Palestinian state” in addition to “the existing Palestinian state of Jordan,” and inevitable war. The problem is that “the world” is in thrall to “a fundamental historical distortion”: “the lie [that] Israel refuses to negotiate for peace.” “The truth” is that Israel has been trying for 40 years to negotiate a peaceful settlement with its neighbors, while the Arab answer to Israel’s peace moves has been “rejection and war.” The sole exception is Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s trip to Jerusalem in 1977 and the Camp David treaty. “The road to peace is through direct talks between Israel and her Arab neighbors” – excluding the Palestinians.
Rosenthal’s “Truth” Rosenthal’s tale is indeed “the truth” as constructed by Israel and the US. establishment – and faithfully recounted for many years by the New York Times. But the truth is rather different. Consider the period since the Israeli conquests of June 1967. The record for the crucial first decade, under the rule of the “pragmatic” and “moderate” Labor Party, is documented from cabinet records by Yossi Beilin (Mehiro shel Ihud, 1985). The guiding principle throughout, as described by Haim Herzog, now President of Israel, was that the indigenous population cannot be “participants in any way in a land that has been consecrated by our people for thousands of years. To the Jews of this land there cannot be any partner.” Accordingly, independent political activities were barred, as when Prime Minister Golda Meir, in 1972, forbade a pro-Jordanian political conference in the West Bank. The governing Likud coalition is still more extreme. Its central component, Herut, the party of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, insists officially and publicly upon Israel’s claim to Jordan.
On June 19, 1967, the Israeli cabinet voted 11-10 to transmit an offer via the U.S. for a settlement with Syria and Egypt on the international (pre-June 1967) borders, but with Israel keeping Gaza, No mention was made of Jordan and the West Bank. This proposal, which Abba Eban described as “the most dramatic initiative that the government of Israel ever took before or since,” was rescinded a year later, when Israel put forth the Allon Plan, which called for “territorial compromise.” Its terms were that Israel was to keep the Syrian Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, and whatever it found of value in the West Bank – including about 40% of the land but not the bulk of the population. In essence, this remains the Labor Party position. There appear to have been no further initiatives, and Israel has forcefully rejected other proposals apart from the Camp David arrangements, which removed the major Arab deterrent (Egypt) from the conflict, with predictable effects. The result, as observed by Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv, was that “Israel would be free to sustain military operations against the PLO in Lebanon as well as settlement activity on the West Bank. “A vast increase in U.S. aid ensured that these would be exactly the consequences of what Rosenthal calls “the political and spiritual triumph of Camp David.”
Arab Peace Initiatives
Turning to the record of Arab peace initiatives, the first major one was not in 1977 but in February 1971, when Sadat proposed a full peace treaty on the international borders, offering nothing to the Palestinians. This proposal, which conformed closely to the official U.S. stand, was recognized by Israel as a genuine peace offer, but rejected. Israel was backed by the U.S., which preferred “stalemate,” as Henry Kissinger later explained.
Another major initiative was in January 1976, when Syria, Jordan, and Egypt brought a resolution to the UN. Security Council calling for a two-state settlement on the international borders with “appropriate arrangements … to guarantee … the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.” This is the crucial wording of UN 242, which the U.S. government and the Times claim to regard as the proper basis for any settlement. The resolution was openly backed by the PLO, which actually “prepared” it, according to then Israeli U.N. Ambassador Haim Herzog.
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