Fateful Triangle

Preface31retaliation, as, in fact, it has regularly done in the past. Since the end ofIsrael’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. some 25,000 Lebanese andPalestinians have been killed, according to Lebanese officials andinternational relief agencies, along with 900 Israeli soldiers. 20The achievement of imposing its rejectionist program in nearinternational isolation is impressive enough. But U.S. power won anideological victory that is in some ways even more dramatic. By now, itsrejectionist “peace process” is adopted as the framework of a justsettlement worldwide, even among those who only a few years ago werecalling for recognition of Palestinian rights and Israeli withdrawal fromthe occupied territories (in accord with UN 242 of November 1967, asinterpreted throughout the world, including the U.S. until 1971).So far, U.S. and Israeli leaders have been unwilling to move as fartowards accommodating Palestinian rights as South African advocates ofApartheid did towards Blacks 35 years ago. Their solution was “Blackstates,” to which the unwanted populations could be confined, to serveas a cheap labor force when needed. Presumably, the U.S. and Israelwill sooner or later realize that they can gain by adopting a moreprogressive stand of the South African variety. If so, they will agree tocall the Palestinian enclaves a “state” and perhaps even allow them adegree of industrial development (as South Africa did), so that U.S.- andIsraeli-owned manufacturers, joining with rich Palestinians, can exploitcheap and easily exploitable labor, subdued by repression.Calls for a Palestinian state are being heard, though it is instructive tolook at them closely At the extreme pro-Palestinian end of mainstreamdiscourse, Anthony Lewis, joining in the standard denunciations ofNetanyahu, contrasted him with “the unsentimental old soldier” YitzhakRabin, who, with his “sheer intellectual honesty,” was willing to sign theOslo agreements. But unlike Rabin, Netanyahu “opposes any solutionthat would give the Palestinians a viable state—tiny, disarmed, poor,Classics in Politics: The Fateful TriangleNoam Chomsky