Fateful Triangle

Israel and Palestine: Historical Backgrounds263withdrawn—an ugly grey, as the air in their corner becomesexhausted.The strangers have fresh air, they come and go at will—their cheeks are pink, their voices loud and vibrant. But youcling to your corner, you never leave it, afraid that if you do,you will not be allowed back.The strangers are advised by specialists, “‘experts on Arab mentality’churned out by the Hebrew University and called ‘advisers on Arabaffairs’.” 148 If need be, they can use the means of violence that theymonopolize, to whatever degree is required, ensuring that the Samidinwill be no more than drugged roaches in a bottle, in the graphic phraseof Chief of Staff Eitan. See section 5.1* above.Shehadeh gives examples, from his personal experience as a lawyerattempting the hopeless task of working within a legal system devised toensure failure to protect the rights of the vanquished, and from his lifeas a Samid. There is the example of “a criminal who was sentenced tolife, and released soon after by the Israelis and given a gun,” well-placedin what passes for a courtroom alongside of “the Israeli’s man in court,”who has also chosen the second way. There are the Israeli soldiers whoherd demonstrating students into a bus, then shave each one down themiddle of his head, “branded”—each one “a new fida’i” (“freedomfighter” or “terrorist,” according to one’s point of view). And the soldierswho find slogans painted on a wall, who “wait until night and then wakeup all the people on the street and make them whitewash the wall, …mainly old people wrapped in dressing-gowns, shivering, bewildered,some cursing” after the soldiers have broken into their houses to getthem out. There is the military governor who closes an exhibition ofPalestinian art, plays, fashion shows of Palestinian dress at Birzeitcollege on the grounds that “expressions of Palestinian culture areClassics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky