Fateful Triangle

Washington’s “Peace Process”931to Government and Absentee land, an indefinite category that expands atIsrael’s whim, reaching perhaps 70% of the territories, according to theIsraeli press. 53 Oslo II thus abrogates the stand of the entire world,including technically the United States, that legal rights cannot beattained by conquest, and rescinds even the post-1971 U.S.interpretation of UN 242.Palestinians and others are only deluding themselves and otherswhen they say that Israel committed itself to “withdraw from occupiedPalestinian territories, including Jerusalem,” in accord with UN 242, oranything remotely like it; or that they agreed to grant Palestinians“control over water, telecommunications and transport, among otherthings”; or that George Bush’s Madrid initiative “involved theimplementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions on Palestine”(Palestinian Foreign Minister Farouk Kaddumi). Or that “the terms ofreference” for the “peace process” are given by UN 242, the OsloAccords, and the Madrid Conference, “which enshrine the land-forpeaceprinciple” (Egyptian diplomat Abdelaleem El-Abayad). 54 Nothingof the sort is true, as the documents make clear and the consistentpractice even more so, unless we interpret such phrases as “land-forpeace”with the cynicism that would have welcomed the South Africanhomelands policy.Israeli doves may prefer what some observers have called a state of“collective self-denial,” avoiding the documents and the historicalcontext that gives them meaning, or taking refuge in the wordingintroduced to spell out the fact that these are “interim” agreements,hence in principle open to change—which would be true even if theywere “final agreements,” of course. They may choose even not “to see”what is happening a few miles from where they live—not a phenomenonunique to Israel, needless to say. The funders and supporters elsewheremay also find the stance convenient. But the realities remain.Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky