Fateful Triangle

Washington’s “Peace Process”919“the peace process,” insisting on something other than a peace of thevictors in which the Palestinians become “just another crushed nation.”Adopting the technical usage, we can make sense of the weird commentsof Dennis Ross, chief Middle East negotiator for the Bush andClinton Administrations, reported by Times Middle East specialist ElaineSciolino. Ross describes how in March 1993 Rabin presented Clintonwith a “brilliant, cogent, clear-cut argument” explaining “exactly why thedelegates then negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians would not beable to deliver”—to deliver a nonrejectionist settlement recognizing therights of the indigenous population alongside of Israel, Sciolino refrainsfrom adding. But the PLO refused to accept Rabin’s brilliant argument:“at that point they hadn’t demonstrated they were prepared to makepeace,” Ross “recalled”; Sciolino’s term “recalled” implies that therecollection is accurate (one doesn’t “recall” what didn’t happen), asindeed it is, if “making peace” means accepting U.S.-Israeli terms,rejecting UN 242 and any thought of self-determination. When weadopt the conventions, Ross’s statement is transformed from gibberishto simple truth, and Sciolino is not misleading her readers by reportingall of this as factually accurate. A little confusing perhaps, but with aproper education it all works out. 36We might ask what the authentic martyr for peace was up to whenAbu Jihad was assassinated—at Rabin’s “enthusiastic” initiative, Timescorrespondent John Kifner reported from Jerusalem. Then DefenseMinister, Rabin had ordered his troops to suppress the Intifada bybrutality and terror and, shortly after, to attack villages using plasticbullets, because more casualties.., is precisely our aim,” “our purpose isto increase the number [of wounded] among those who take part inviolent activities.” Their “violent activities” are to dare to assert that theyare free, Rabin explained: “We want to get rid of the illusion of somepeople in remote villages that they have liberated themselves,” and byClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky