"Where Chaos Is King"

[bloom]

By Mark LeVine

Learning from the Israelis (as Usual) (the last section @ the bottom)

If such planned chaos was limited to Iraq, we could perhaps see it as an aberration rather than part of the larger dynamics of contemporary globalization. But research on countries from Africa to the former Soviet Union has demonstrated that chaos -- whether the "instrumentalized disorder" in sub-Saharan Africa or the "bardok" of Central Asia -- defines political life across an increasingly large "arc of instability" stretching across three continents. Palestine is a particularly good example of how chaos, or "fawda" as Palestinians term it, can serve the political interests of an occupying power.

It has long been an open secret that the U.S. conducted extensive training with the help of the Israeli Defense and Security forces to prepare for the urban warfare and interrogation practices of Iraq. While discussing the best way to ram through walls and "interrogate" suspected insurgents, it's not unlikely that the Israelis shared their experiences fomenting chaos to wear down Palestinian society, particularly since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada and the demise of the Oslo negotiations.

As argues Israeli social scientist Gershon Baskin, Ariel Sharon's policy of unilateralism in response to the failure of negotiations has made sense to the majority of Israelis largely because they see the "total chaos" across the West Bank and the "rule of the gun" in newly "liberated" Gaza as demonstrating that "the PA is too weak to rule" an independent Palestine, or even to negotiate its establishment. What few Israelis sharing this position consider, however, is how Israeli policies have systematically created the very chaos that is now used as the excuse for engaging in unilateral steps such as withdrawing from Gaza while cementing -- literally -- Israeli control over much of the West Bank.

Yet the roots of Israel's strategy of chaos do not lie in the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, or in the autocratic and corrupt policies of Yasser Arafat. Rather they go back to 1994 -- the same year that Paul Wolfowitz, then a dean at the Johns Hopkins University, held a conference on the "coming anarchy." It was then that the Paris protocols to the Oslo Agreements were signed. These agreements, rarely mentioned in discussions of why Oslo failed, locked Palestinians into a catastrophic neoliberalized relationship with Israel for the remainder of the Oslo process. This happened just at the moment when Israel more or less permanently closed the Occupied Territories. Aside from a few industries run by Palestinians with ties to Israel, this nearly destroyed what was then a modest but growing Palestinian economy, led to a creeping but disastrous emigration of the country's middle class, and ultimately helped create a "severely depressed… devastated" economy that, in the words of the 2004 Palestine Human Development Report, was "ripe for corruption." <more>

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=30881

[pelsar]

1. which means..

israel is responsable for the islamic jihad, the saleries and weapons...same holds true for the hamas, al asqa brigades, tanzim, etc etc etc.

minor point in that pathetic article...arafat developed/fed/and kept the 17 security organizations in various states of flux, depending upon his needs. Its those same organizations plus the corrupt PA which is responsable for their soceity, and whom are now at each others throats.

this 'blame israel" thing for all the woes of the world and especially the palestenains is getting really old, not that it will susbside, why ruin a 2,000 year old habit....

[bloom]

3. I don't think people have been blaming "Israel" for 2000 years

"Israel" was not there to blame.

[eyl]

2. Unfortunately

beyond stating that Israel deliberately fomented chaos in the Palestinian terrotiries since 1994, Levine doesn't bother stating what steps Israel took to do that (except for "Israel more or less permanently closed the Occupied Territories", something which didn't quite happen, AFAIR)

[bemildred]

4. Fixated on the Neocons, I see.

This restates the obvious, but it is a common strategy in
any occupation or colonial enterprise, and goes back much
further than PNAC, and was hardly invented by Israel, in fact
the good old USA was in this business hundreds of years before
Israel even existed.

And yes, I do find it ridiculous to claim that the Government
of Israel wants a vibrant and strong Palestinian society and
government, so it can promptly return all the occupied lands to
it/them. It does not, and it does work actively to keep the
Palestinians weak and disorganized, in many ways, and "terror"
is one of the primary public justifications for that policy.

[eyl]

5. I'm not saying

That Israel has pushed for a "vibrant and strong Palestinian society and government"; but suggesting it has some kind of long-term strategy to foment chaos is pushing it (among other reasons, because it would require a lot more long-range planning than most Israeli governments indulge in). And why the scare quotes around "terror"?

[bemildred]

6. There are other uses for quotes than the one you mention.

There is no such thing as "scare quotes" in English.

WRT the main question, you can argue about intent,
but not effect. There are many good Israelis who
wish the Palestinians well and work to help them,
and vice-versa. OTOH the effects of Israeli Gov't
policy are clear and consistent, right back to the
beginning and into the period before the creation of
the Israeli state. Neither the intent nor the policy
has been to strengthen or to assist the Arabs, they
are seen as the enemy. The analogy with the colonists
here in N. America and the US government that followed
is not a bad one. The existence of and the prior
human and legal rights of the Palestinians are seen
correctly as an existential threat to the Israeli
state, even as the First Peoples are here, and they
are so treated by the government.

It is not so much the policy that annoys me, although
as with the US' treatment of it's indigenous peoples I
think it could have been done a lot better, but the
hypocrisy of the constant whining about how you would
really LIKE to make peace with the Palestinians if
only they would let you.

[barb162]

10. I think the Israelis do want peace. Not to be interrpreted as

love or liking for the Palestinians, but mutual tolerance at best, a state of non-warring. There is no point in not having peace; it is too damned exhaustive and expensive for both sides as it is going now. The only way both sides will flourish is to have peace. I can't see the alternative going on indefinitely...always this damned fighting, provocation after provocation. It just drains both sides

"Neither the intent nor the policy
has been to strengthen or to assist the Arabs, they
are seen as the enemy"

I don't know the detailed ins and outs of Israeli policy from 48 on, but I suspect this is probably very true. But also very understandable. You tolerate them at best, you don't often want to help, etc. It's only a very recent development in human history and still very uncommon, to make offers to help those you see as enemies. Before the end of WW2 I don't think there were any large or any other scale attempts to help enemies. Human nature seldom if ever rose to humanitarianism and it is still rare. What was done to the native peoples in the US is far worse, in that most are dead.

[bemildred]

11. I don't see anything you say that I disagree with.

I particularly like your first paragraph.
A few things I could quibble with, but I won't.

[bloom]

7. ridiculous claims

Just because Israel is doing some kind of Machiavellian thing to act like they are noble or something - like the neo-cons do in this country - doesn't mean that we should believe them.

Also - if we can't complain about neo-cons on DU - then we can't complain about anyone, IMO.

Since Israel is practically a surrogate of the US - with the US funding them as much as we do - I think I have every right to expect as much of them as I do my own gov't & I have every right and responsibility to criticize them as I do my own country.

And I don't really get people who say they are progressive and say they support Israel 100% any more than I would get someone saying they are progressive and support the USA under BushCo 100%.

It doesn't make any sense to me.

[bemildred]

9. I don't think I have an argument with you.

You can pummel the Neocons all you like,
I will not object, they are swine. I was
just trying to add some context, in the
sense they are not some new sort of swine,
but rather the same old sort.

[barb162]

12. your fourth paragraph

I am progressive and support Israel's right to exist. That doesn't mean I agree with everything their government does.

What I don't get is progressives who support intolerant regimes or social systems which violate human rights.

[Coastie for Truth]

8. Click over to here--->

BTW - I have purchased and read LeVine's "Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil", and while I do not buy 100% into everything LeVine says, the following excerpt is interesting--

What the Space Command didn't mention, though it has since become a predominant concern of the Bush Administration (as the secret files of the Cheney Energy Task Force reveal) is how the expected arrival of the era of "peak oil" and the levels of global energy chaos sure to accompany it have exponentially increased the stakes involved in controlling Iraq's immense oil reserves. Growing competition with an energy-thirsty China and, to a lesser extent, the European Union has only amplified this concern, and helped produce a situation where the blowback potential from the invasion and long-term occupation of Iraq seemed, at least on paper, well worth the risk.

...

Its second goal is to ensure a predominant role for U.S. companies in the development, production, and sale of the country's vast reservoirs of oil. Indeed, the few documents made public from the Cheney Energy Task Force revealed that concern over losing Iraq to European oil companies, combined with China's insatiable thirst for petroleum and fears that it would increasingly encroach on America's sphere of economic dominance, were important reasons for the war. If the world really has entered an era of zero-sum competition over its remaining oil supplies, Iraq is a prize worth shedding a lot of blood to secure -- and chaos, whatever the ensuing pain, a strategy potentially worth pursuing.

Which basically says that the cause of Iraq War was to "control the Oil Spigot" (LeVine on Air America Radio, 10/19, may have been Mike Malloy).