Noam Chomsky "The Occupation of Palestine: A Short History"

I've been asked to say a few words, and I'll try to keep it to a few words on the occupation, uh, just meaning the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And I'll keep to that, omit, uh, the Golan Heights, a separate but important issue, uh, just to let you know where I stand on the matter, uh, so no confusion.

Uh, of the, I think there is a possibility now of a, uh, diplomatic settlement, pretty much in accord with what has been a very longstanding, uh, and extremely broad international consensus since the mid-1970s, namely a two-state settlement on the recognized international border with minor modifications. Uh, that has not been possible for one reason: because the United States has been blocking it since the mid-1970s and continues to block it. But that much is in our hands, uh, so that could change. About two-thirds of the population supports it but has no effect on policy. And the, uh, one formulation of that, there are various formulations of this proposal, uh, one of them, um, the most, uh, reasonable one on the table, I think, is the so-called Geneva Accords being discussed in Geneva right now. Um, most of the relevant countries have lent support to it. The US is notable by its absence, as usual.

Uh, the, uh, uh, in my view, this is, I'm not suggesting it's a wonderful agreement. I don't think it is. I think it's the least, uh, unpleasant of the realistic alternatives, uh, at least for the short term. Maybe it can lead to something better later on, but that's just so you know where I stand, and you can triangulate as you like.

Uh, I'll, uh, I will review briefly. That's all I'll do, in fact. Some of the steps leading up to this. For many of you, this should be familiar. In fact, for everyone, it should be something you learn about in elementary school. Uh, so I apologize for saying things that should be at least well known, and would be if we valued their freedom, but unfortunately are not well known, in fact, barely known.

Uh, so let me quickly review. Uh, as I said, by occupied territories, I will refer to, uh, take as a starting point the, uh, effective international border as it was, uh, settled in 1949. Uh, that border, what's called the Green Line, uh, uh, divides the, um, Palestinian state that was recommended in, uh, at the UN resolution two years earlier. It divides it roughly in two, almost exactly in two. Half of it was taken over by Israel. That part is called Israel, and it's not under contention. Uh, the other half was taken over by Jordan. That's what's called the West Bank, and that's the part that's under contention. Uh, so that partition is essentially finished as far as the international community is concerned, and it's not debated.

Uh, the, uh, uh, the border stayed that way until 19. I mean, Israel invaded in 1956 but was compelled by the US to withdraw. In 1967, uh, Israel again invaded, this time with US support, uh, and, uh, conquered the Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. That's the situation as it is now. Uh, what I'm referring to now as the occupied territories again are the West Bank and, uh, the Gaza Strip.

Uh, the next, in, um, um, November 1967, the, uh, Security Council, uh, accepted a US-initiated resolution, UN 242, which called for a settlement on the international border, on the Green Line, with, uh, in the US official version, with minor and mutual adjustments, but essentially on the Green Line. So maybe straighten out a curved border or something like that. That was the US position. It was adopted by essentially the world. Notice that that resolution was completely rejectionist. It said nothing about Palestinian rights. They're not mentioned. The only reference to Palestinians is a vague, Palestinians is a vague allusion to unspecified rights of refugees. Uh, uh, that, uh, remained at, at that time.

In 1967, the resolution was, it called essentially for peace, a full peace treaty in return for full withdrawal, minor modifications and mutual ones. Uh, Israel rejected the withdrawal. The major Arab states rejected peace. Things were at a standstill until 1971, when Egypt broke the ice by offering Israel a full peace treaty, a complete peace treaty in terms of official US policy, in return not for withdrawal, but for partial withdrawal, that is, withdrawal from Egyptian territory. The Egyptian offer said nothing about the West Bank, about the Palestinians, the Golan Heights. Thought it said in return for withdrawal from Egyptian territory, uh, Egypt would accept a full peace treaty. Uh, Israel, Egypt is the major military force in the Arab world. With Egypt out of the conflict, the military aspect of the conflict would have essentially been over.

Israel understood that. We have a lot of Israeli internal documents from the period, some of them secret then, some public, and they're consistent. They understood that, uh, there could be full peace at this point and integration into the region. But Israel decided to reject the offer, uh, on, because they preferred expansion. Expansion at that time meant into the Sinai. That was the crucial area. Israel was there. A Labor government, Golda Meir Labor government, was expanding into the Northeast Sinai, from which thousands of, uh, farmers had been expelled, driven into the desert behind barbed wire, their towns, mosques, and so on leveled, in preparation for the building of an old Jewish city called Yamit, which was a major project at the time.

The crucial question was how the United States would react. As always, uh, the United States is, uh, what one, uh, astute Israeli commentator, one of their major political commentators, really recently described as the boss man, called partner, which is essentially accurate. So the question is how the boss man, called partner, would react. Uh, the boss man had an internal debate. It was won by Henry Kissinger, and the US government decided to, uh, abandon its former position and accept Israel's position, and to, uh, follow what Kissinger called the policy of stalemate. Stalemate means no negotiations, just force. That, uh, ended the Egyptian initiative. Actually, Egypt continued to put it forward in every way it could. President Sadat of Egypt, who had initiated it, warned repeatedly that, uh, if Israel continued expanding into the Sinai with US backing, he would go to war. And his phrase, "Yamit means war," nobody took him very seriously. It was a period of enormous triumphalism in both Israel and the United States. Egypt was assumed to be a basket case, and it was just disregarded.

In 1973, to everyone's astonishment, Egypt did go to war, uh, and, uh, to everyone's greater astonishment, turned out to be militarily highly successful. It was a very close thing for Israel, in fact, for the world. The United States declared a nuclear alert, and it was pretty tense. It could have been a superpower conflict, meaning the end. At that point, Kissinger recognized that Egypt can't simply be dismissed, and he initiated what was called his shuttle diplomacy, you know, moving up and back and trying to arrange some sort of ceasefire. Without going through the details, that led finally to the Camp David Accords of 1978, in which the United States and Israel accepted Sadat's 1971 offer.

Uh, except that at that point, the offer was much less acceptable to the US and Israel than it would have been in 1971, because by then the Palestinian issue was on the table. So the new Sadat offer in 1978 was that Israel, Egypt would make peace with Israel if Israel withdrew from the, from Egyptian territory, Sinai, and, uh, also recognized Palestinian rights. That was new, not in 1971. The way this is described in the United States, it's called, and in fact in the West, thanks to the power of US propaganda, it's described as a diplomatic triumph of the United States. In fact, Carter, President Carter, just got a Nobel Peace Prize for it recently. Actually, it was a diplomatic catastrophe for the United States. It was an acceptance of a harsher version, from their point of view, of an offer that was on the table in 1971, which Washington had rejected, leading to a major war, almost destruction, years of tragedy and torture, and finally the US came around and accepted it. But history is written by the, by the victors and the powerful. Doesn't necessarily have much relationship to what happened. You can check and see if, if you agree that that's what happened. There's not really any controversy. The documentary record is very straightforward.

By 197, as I mentioned, by then, by 1978, uh, the, uh, Palestinian issue was on the table. That reached the international agenda on, in 1976, January 1976, when the Security Council debated a resolution calling for a political settlement on the international border, with, uh, uh, but now different from UN 242, because it called for a Palestinian state in the, uh, territories that Israel would evacuate, the West Bank and, uh, Gaza. The, uh, there was a very broad, very broad international support for that. It was supported by all the Arab states, major Arab states, by the PLO, in fact, pretty much by the whole world. The US vetoed it. A US veto typically is a double veto. It doesn't happen, and it's vetoed from history. Uh, so you have to work hard to find out about it. That was the first, uh, overt US step to block the international consensus, which still persists. Same international consensus, same blocking.

By, in, uh, 19, uh, well, I won't run through the rest of the record, but from that point until the present, the United States has continued to intervene unilaterally, vetoing Security Council resolutions, voting against similar General Assembly resolutions, usually alone. Alone means with Israel, sometimes with, you know, the Marshall Islands or someone else who's picked up, but, uh, essentially unilaterally. And has also blocked other initiatives. There have been a whole series of diplomatic initiatives, all blocked by Washington. That continues to the present.

In 1991, just to move to the next step in the diplomacy, after the first Gulf War, the US felt that it was in a position to, uh, it had made it clear in the first Gulf War that the US was going to dominate that region by force. Everybody else understood. Everybody backed off. The US was in a position to, to ram through its own unilateral agreement. So it assumed the Madrid Conference, right after the Gulf War, was called to institute the US position. There was, however, a snag. There was a Palestinian, there was an authentic Palestinian delegation headed by, uh, the most respected figure in the occupied territories, Haidar Abdul Shafi, a conservative nationalist, honest, renowned for his integrity, and highly respected. And he simply refused to go along. He headed the Palestinian negotiation team, and they simply refused to accept the US-Israeli demand that a settlement, a political settlement, permit continued, uh, Israeli, US-backed Israeli moves to settle and integrate as much of the occupied territories as they wanted. That's, uh, that was the point on which the negotiations blocked.

We got around that thanks to the Palestinian leadership outside Palestine, it's called the Tunis leadership, the PLO and Yasser Arafat, who decided to undercut the Palestinian negotiating team and agree to a, a political arrangement which would permit continued Israeli settlement, that means US-funded and backed Israeli settlement in the occupied territories, and further integration, building infrastructure, and so on. That was called the Oslo Agreement. Highly praised here. Grand meeting on the White House lawn. The day of awe, according to the Boston Globe. If you read the terms of the Oslo Agreement, the Declaration of Principles, it was completely obvious what was happening. The terms did refer to UN 242, but they left out all other UN resolutions, which called for Palestinian national rights. Remember, UN 242 is completely rejectionist, nothing about the Palestinians. So the Declaration of Principles described the permanent settlement, the long-term settlement that they were going to reach, as based solely on UN 242, hence offering nothing to the Palestinians. And there was nothing in it about any bar to continued US-backed Israeli settlements and integration programs in the occupied territories.

The, the Palestinians did have a role. The Palestinian Authority was set up. Its role, as Prime Minister Rabin pointed out with great pleasure, was, uh, its role would be to control the Palestinian population by force and violence and terror. Could be as brutal as it wanted, as corrupt as it wanted, didn't matter, as long as it kept the Palestinians under control. As Rabin put it, in his usual gentle way, uh, they would be able to control the Palestinians without concern for human rights organizations, the Israeli High Court, mothers and fathers who don't like what's happening, what their children are doing, and so on and so forth. A standard colonial procedure. It's very familiar in the history of colonialism. The imperial colonies are almost always run by collaborators, you know, not by the imperial country. Collaborators run the political system, run security forces. One of the shocking things about this American occupation of Iraq is that it hasn't been able to duplicate, really, what almost every military occupation does quite easily. Very surprising. Anyway, that was the role of the Palestinian Authority.

So things continued through the 1990s, with the continued steady Israeli, US-backed Israeli settlement and development programs. The year 2000, the last Clinton year, actually had the highest level of settlement since before the, uh, Oslo agreements. It was continuing steadily and, in fact, increasing. And that's the core has been the core of the territorial problem. There are other problems, but the keeping, just to the occupation, it's a territorial issue, and that's the core of it.

Camp David, in, there was another Camp David meeting in the summer of 2000, where proposals were made. They were very highly praised in the United States as extremely magnanimous and generous and marvelous offer, which the Palestinians turned down because they want to kill all the Jews or something like this. There's a very easy way to test that thesis, which was essentially unanimous in US journalism and commentary. The easy way to test the thesis is to look at a map. Seems obvious. If it's a magnanimous, generous offer, then the map ought to show it. Well, that's not so easy, it turns out, because no one has been able to find a single map in the entire US media. It's not that they were hard to find. I mean, they're available in the standard scholarly sources which the press and commentators use when they want to. They were there in the Israeli press. They were there in critical literature. I came, the talks of mine and others, we described the maps. So they were there, they just weren't presented.

The reason why they weren't presented is that it's pretty clear when you look at them. The generous offer broke the West Bank into essentially three separated cantons, a northern, central, and southern one, divided from one another by Israeli settlement and huge infrastructure properties, projects. All three of them pretty much separated, virtually separated from a small part of Jerusalem, the fourth West Bank canton, that it's traditionally the center of Palestinian commercial, cultural, life, health services, and so on. So four West Bank enclaves, separated from Gaza, the future of which was unclear. So that's, it's what most, many mainstream Israeli commentators rightly called a kind of a Bantustan settlement, referring to the South African model, which was in fact a conscious model, I should say.

Uh, uh, well, you know, magnanimous from some points of view, not from others. In, um, recog, um, just to be fair to Clinton and Barak, one should say that it was a considerable improvement over the existing situation. The existing situation was that the Gaza was split into three separate regions, three separate Palestinian cantons, and the West Bank was separated into 227 cantons, little areas, some a few square kilometers, basically closed off. And this was going to improve it to four cantons in the West Bank and presumably one in Gaza. So it was an improvement. It's worth remembering the 227 and three, because the current roadmap, you know, of the Quartet, it's usually called the US roadmap, calls for, in the out, in the distance, sometime, a return to the status quo as of 2000. So therefore, it's interesting to remember what the status quo was in 2000: 227 Palestinian cantons in the West Bank and three in Gaza.

Uh, that obviously wasn't going to go anywhere. However, negotiations did continue, uh, uh, after the, uh, Intifada broke out. Shortly after, negotiations continued in Taba, in Egyptian city, in Taba, in 19, in 2001, in January. There were informal but high-level negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, and they reached a tentative agreement, which is available if you're interested in the Israeli press and the European press. I don't think there's any, never seen any discussion of it in the United States, except again around the periphery, dissident literature. There's a detailed description of it by the European Union Observer, which is accurate. It was, uh, accepted by both sides, published in the mainstream Israeli press, and it's a clear improvement over the, uh, impossible Geneva Accords. There were still points of disagreement, territorial points about, you know, Israeli settlements breaking up the West Bank and so on, but it was a step towards a more equitable resolution of the territorial problem.

Well, that was terminated. Those negotiations were terminated by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak right before the Israeli elections. It was thought that that ended it. We've recently learned that the negotiations continued, and they lead up to the Geneva Accords. If you take a look at the Geneva Accords again, here you can occasionally find something looking like a map. They're a considerable improvement over the Taba proposals, which were themselves a very substantial improvement over Camp David. Could look at the details. That's essentially what's on the table now. It could be, I think, to go back to where I started, the basis for a serious political settlement that at least ends the cycle of violence and maybe lays the basis for something better in the future. Is it just, no, it's not just.

For one reason, Israel incidentally abandons nothing in the, uh, Geneva Accords, zero, to be precise. It abandons a little strip of territory along the Gaza Strip, which is not very important, and in return, it takes over a piece of the West Bank. But it abandons nothing, in the, you know, that's to which it's legally entitled, at least. Uh, uh, the Palestinians do abandon quite a bit. They abandon a stretch of the West Bank, and crucially, a large section of the Palestinians are not represented at all, namely the refugees. They're not part of these negotiations, and their rights are essentially dismissed. Several million people. Uh, so, you know, in terms of justice, probably can make all kinds of criticisms of it. I should say many, long old friends of mine and longtime associates have signed protests against it, which I don't agree with, because I think my own view again, and I'll stop with this, that of the realistic possibilities, realistic, it's about the only one that, uh, uh, has any chance of being implemented. In some other universe, one could think of other things, but, uh, people who are suffering and miserable and tortured can't live with promises of some other universe. They have to have solutions in this universe, at least in my view.

Anyhow, that's where things stand now, and how they got there, as I understand it. So let me stop and turn it to [Applause] [Music] you. Thank you, Professor Chomsky. Um, I would like now, I would like to now present Professor Chomsky with a traditional Jordanian headscarf as a token of our appreciation. Um, recently, people have been associating these headscarves with terrorists and terrorism. This is unfortunate, and we would hope to fight the stereotype and reassociate these headscarves with their true cultural significance. I would now like to open the floor for questions.

You know, it's a long story. I, I've written a lot about it, so let me just refer you to what I've written, but, uh, and then I'll just briefly summarize. So I've been writing about it for 40 years. As internal documents have been coming out, we get a clearer picture of it. Uh, there's a summary, at least the way I understand it, in a book of mine that just came out a couple of weeks ago called *Hegemony or Survival*. One of the chapters is about this, and it reviews what I think the record shows. In brief, it seems to me it's roughly like this: Uh, in 1948, the, uh, Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US military, was very impressed with Israel's military prowess and described them as, Israel as the most powerful military force in the Middle East, second only to Turkey. Turkey was really the base of US power and remained so, the main military force. Uh, and they mentioned, they said, well, sooner or later, you know, we might want to think about Israel as a base for us, part of the US system of control. What the US is concerned about in the Middle East is no secret. It has the world's major energy resources, period. If it wasn't for that, could go down the tube. And when the oil is finished, it will go down the tube unless something is done. These are internal, serious internal problems for the Arab world, I should say. But as far as the United States is concerned, what's important is to control the oil. The US at that time, in the mid-40s, State Department described the Persian Gulf resources as what they called a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history, or the most important area in the world for foreign investment. Not a small thing, you know, kind of important, even more so today. Uh, and the method of control of the oil resources was essentially taken over from the British. British had been the primary imperial power. US was a secondary player up until the Second World War. The British and secondarily the French mostly controlled that region. The British, uh, technique was to establish what they called an Arab facade. That meant weak, pliable governments, which would control their own populations, with, and behind the scenes, behind what the British called various constitutional fictions like, uh, democracy and freedom and parliament and so on, behind those constitutional fictions, the British would effectively rule. But the Arab facade would run it. Again, the standard imperial pattern. The, uh, pretty much what the US is trying to institute in Iraq right now. It's almost copying the British model.

The, uh, uh, France was a secondary power in the region. After the Second World War, the US simply kicked France out on the legalistic grounds that France was an enemy country, because it had been conquered by the Germans, and therefore its concessions were, uh, removed. You can do that if you're powerful. So France was kicked out. Britain was slowly reduced to the level of junior partner, and the US took it over, but essentially with the British framework, Arab facades. The United States, however, introduced another level of control, what we're called peripheral states, non-Arab states, which would be what the Nixon administration later called local cops on the beat. They were, police headquarters would be in Washington, of course, and kind of a branch office in London, but the local cops on the beat would be the, the military powers around the Gulf region. One of them was Turkey. That was the main one, still a main one. Another was Iran, after they succeeded in overthrowing the parliamentary regime in Iran in 1953 and reinstituting a dictatorship. Iran was the second major cop on the beat. And the question was, would Israel be one of them? That's been the issue.

Well, in 1958, there was a long step towards that. There, it was a very, I won't, I won't go into it in detail, but it was a very important year in the Middle East and in fact in the world, 1958. The, um, Iraq broke out of the Anglo-American condominium. There was a military coup in Iraq, and it took over its own oil resources. It was deep concern in London and Washington. Uh, uh, the British, uh, uh, British military base was Jordan, looked as if was under threat. The US sent military forces to Lebanon, apparently equipped with nuclear weapons. The concern was that Nasser, Nasser of Egypt, who was the national symbol, was influencing independent nationalism in the region. The only country in the region that offered any support to the US and, uh, Britain at the time was Israel. Did all Turkey, of course, but that's taken for granted. Turkey and Iran are taken for granted. But right in the region, Israel did offer some support. The, uh, President Eisenhower and the National Security Council in 1958 internally concluded that, as they put it, a logical corollary of opposition to Arab nationalism is support for Israel as the only reliable base internal to the region, part of the periphery system.

In 1967, that was just solidified. I mean, when Israel conquered, you know, essentially destroyed Nasser, who was the main concern of the US, that was considered a great, a great, uh, gift to US power and to the facade. There was a defense of the oil monarchies against nationalism. And from then on, it's just continued. Israel's been regarded as what's called a strategic asset. In the early 70s, uh, US intelligence regarded, um, the structure of the reg, of US power in the region is based on a, a local tripartite alliance between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, with Turkey right in the background. Leading US political figures who are concerned with the region, like Senator Jackson, expressed the same views. In 1959, the Shah was overthrown, Iran went off, you know, became an enemy, and that just meant the role of Israel was more important. And in fact, the Israeli-Turkish alliance is extremely close. It was founded in 1958, a military alliance, that fateful year, and it's now Israel's strongest alliance after the United States, part of the whole framework of control. By now, Israel's become virtually a US military base. It's, uh, uh, it's got the most, it's, it's a little country, small country, but it has extremely powerful military forces. It has hundreds of nuclear weapons, other weapons of mass destruction. It's, according to its own military sources, the, its air and armored forces are larger and technologically more advanced than any NATO power outside the US. So it's no small thing. It's tightly linked to the United States, and in terms of its economy, kind of a high-tech military-based economy, really closely interlinked with the US. It's coming to mimic the United States in other respects. It was at one point a relatively egalitarian, more or less social democratic society, you know, kind of Scandinavian type social democracy. That's all completely gone. It's now like the United States. Has the highest inequality in the industrial world after the United States. Social systems collapsing like in the United States, and in other respects, it's becoming similar to the boss man called partner, not surprisingly. But I, I think that's the core of the issue. I mean, there are other things, you know, there are other factors, but my view, at least, that's been the core of it.

Okay, so his very reasonable question is that I said before that I think the current Geneva Accords, as they're called, the ones under discussion in Geneva, are the least bad, or maybe the best, the best plan that can be implemented. Why did I have the opposite view about the Oslo Agreements, Camp David, and Taba? That's the question. Well, the reason is that these are the first agreements, the first proposals that do not, uh, institute effectively Bantustans in the occupied territories. Um, the Oslo Agreements in 1993 essentially offered the Palestinians nothing, as I mentioned. They didn't mention Palestinian rights. Uh, and over the Oslo years, if you look at the successive agreements, again, I've written a lot about it, others have too, they simply institutionalized Israeli control over the occupied territories. When I say Israeli, I mean US-backed Israeli. Israel can't do anything without US backing. Uh, the, uh, Camp David Accords, as I mentioned, I, I think were a disaster. Taba agreements were somewhat better, but they still had those, they they never resolved the issue. If you look at the Taba agreements, they never resolved the issue of the Israeli settlements, the settlement blocs that effectively broke the West Bank into three parts. It was left unresolved at the end of the Taba agreements. These proposals actually do offer a resolution. You can debate whether you like the resolution, but at least, you know, it's some, it, it would lead to a territorial division that allows for a degree of independence, subsidiary independence, no doubt. All of these proposals establish what Ehud Barak's chief negotiator, Shlomo Ben-Ami, an Israeli academic, described as the goal of the Oslo Accords, namely a permanent neocolonial dependency for the Palestinians in one form or another. They all have that character. That's part of the injustice. Uh, but, unfortunately, you know, my view, that's at the moment, it's a fact of life. Until the United States and other international forces, uh, modify their position on this, I don't think anything more just can be attained.

This is pretty much in our hands, incidentally. As I mentioned, the US position, just to give you an indication of US public opinion, which is rarely reported in the United States because it's too opposed to US government policy, but, um, the US public is about two-thirds in favor of what's called the Saudi plan, which means total Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, no, none of the shenanigans around the border, inter, for peace. Uh, by a very substantial majority. Also, so about two to one, the public thinks that the United States ought to terminate aid to either of the two parties, either Israel or the Palestinians, which is not negotiating in good faith to achieve a political settlement. And if both parties are negotiating, the US ought to equalize aid to them. Well, you know, if any of you are familiar with the actual aid flow, I mean, this is a radical revision of US policy. I mean, just a total revision of it. In fact, US public opinion is so extreme on this matter that these facts can't even be reported, and they aren't. Uh, so even though they come from the major academic-based polling agency in the United States, Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, very detailed, in-depth studies, which are quoted when they give tolerable results, but not here. Uh, uh, and in fact, that means that people who have these attitudes probably think they're isolated, and they probably think I'm the only person in the country who believes this because you don't know that other people do.

Well, all of that is important because it means there is a basis, a popular basis, for developing political pressures that could lead to a political settlement, could shift US unilateral rejection of even the Geneva Accords, but it has to be done. It's not going to happen by itself.

Well, actually, I haven't read Alan Dershowitz's book, and to tell you the honest truth, I haven't read anything of his. And since for the last 30 years, ever since he was publicly exposed, very publicly, in the Boston Globe, as a liar and a fraud and a fanatic opponent of civil rights, it's all in print. I can give it to you if you like. But since then, I frankly haven't bothered. Oh, the question was, have I read Alan Dershowitz's book and what do I think about what he said about me? That's, as far as I was concerned, that was settled 30 years ago, and I haven't really bothered since. It's astonishing to me that he's able to survive the publication of what happened then. You can look at it if you like, but if you like, I'll describe it to you. Uh, the book itself, I've seen parts of because people sent me pieces, and it's just complete fraud. I mean, it's worth discussing. I don't like to give general comments without details in front of me, but, uh, if you can think of anything that ought to be commented on, I'd like to hear it.

Yeah, he really attacked, or actually claims that he could use, uh, historians that you rely on, such as Morris, to disprove your points. Yeah. Well, actually, he's referring to, it's interesting what he does there, at least what was sent to me, I assume what was sent to me by several people, including his associates, was accurate. It's all the same. Uh, he quotes, uh, something from a talk that I gave at Harvard about a year ago. He doesn't quote from the talk, which is about a totally different. First of all, quoting from a talk is already childish and ridiculous. Nobody does it, especially when a ton of materials in print. But he didn't quote from the talk, he quoted from the Q&A, which is even more ridiculous. Uh, he quoted a comment that I made about Benny Morris in the Q&A, which was, of course, from memory, and it wasn't part of the talk. Turns out the quote was almost a word-for-word paraphrase of what Morris actually said. Okay, so what he quoted was a comment of mine in informal Q&A referring to Benny Morris, and in fact, precise, almost precisely, you know, so close to accurate, it could have been in a scholarly article and no one would have noticed it. It wasn't a quote, of course, it was a paraphrase, but happened to be almost verbatim, and that's what he says he can refute, citing Benny Morris. And I'll give you the wording if you like, but that's the way it continues. It's a joke.

Well, the question had to do with Russian policy throughout this whole period and whether, and the U-turn in it in recent years. Actually, there's been no U-turn. Russian policy throughout this period was right in the heart of the international consensus. I mean, there's all kinds of issues you could talk about, but of the issues that I've been discussing, the diplomacy, Russia was no different from Western Europe as far as the diplomacy was concerned. They supported the international consensus since the mid-1970s. They continued to support it. Brezhnev put forth his own plan, which was approximately identical, and they backed all the UN resolutions. They were right in the core of the international consensus, uh, and they still are. I mean, there is a change in policy, but lots of ways, but not on the diplomacy of the Middle East. I mean, because there really hasn't been any change in the international position. You know, slight modifications, but the international position, which has just been an overwhelming consensus, uh, has been pretty stable. It's been blocked by the United States, but no one else.

In terms of the pressure it exerts, it doesn't exert much pressure. I mean, it did support the Arab states, so it supported the Arab states militarily. It gave some tepid support to the Palestinians, not amounting to much, but, you know, that's, yeah, that's part of the Cold War. If the United States militarily supports one side, the Russians support the other, so on. But it had almost nothing to do with the diplomacy. Israeli military power was backed by the US, and Turkey and so on, was just overwhelming. As I mentioned, by now, Israel was more powerful than any NATO power. It's not Russia, but, you know, England, France, etc.

Well, I mean, there are unpleasant things going on in the United States and internal to Israel, but by comparison of standards, by world standards, the United States and Israel for Jews are very, are both very free societies. So we're not under, you know, you don't have to be afraid of the police when you walk outside. I'm saying, I'm saying for certain communities, yeah, sure, for marginalized communities, true, but that's always been true. In fact, it's been much worse in the past. I mean, look, it's not good now. A lot of terrible things are happening now. So what's happening, say, under the Patriot Act, that should not be tolerated in a democratic society. On the other hand, we should also be realistic. By comparative standards, either to the rest of the world or even to recent US history, it's not out of sight. I mean, the programs of internal repression that ran through the Kennedy to Nixon administrations were much more serious than what's happening now. They're also not reported much because it's the wrong story, but COINTELPRO, the counter-intelligence program, which was run by the national political police, the FBI, from Kennedy, actually started under Eisenhower, mainly Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon until it was finally stopped by the courts, was theoretically at least, was far more severe repression than anything that exists now. I mean, it went all the way to political assassination. It was really no joke. And even that didn't begin to compare with Woodrow Wilson's Red Scare, which was comparably worse than either of them. So it's, there has been a general improvement. I mean, Ashcroft would doubtlessly like to drive it back, but, and there's plenty of things that should be, should not be tolerated, but the repression is restricted in the United States to highly vulnerable people, of course, that's not a compliment, you know, but, and it shouldn't be tolerated, but it's realistic. And by comparison with other parts of the world, you know, it's hardly repression.

And for Jews in Israel, it's the same. For Palestinians, of course, it's a vicious and harsh military occupation, as it's been for 35 years. I mean, it's different than it was in earlier years. You know, so going to be more Black faces in Harvard and MIT than there were 30 years ago. On the other hand, if you take a look at the prison population, I mean, it's just outrageous. Ages, you know, a huge part of the Black and Latino population are simply thrown into jail. That's mainly what the drug war is about. It's a device for getting rid of superfluous people by tossing them into jail. And that certainly should not be tolerated. But again, you know, if you go back, say, to 30 years, 35 years, COINTELPRO reached the point of literally assassinating, assassinating Black organizers, assassinating him, you know, Fred Hampton was murdered in his bed in a Chicago police raid set up by the FBI, probably drugged, murdered. Another guy too, and nobody cared, you know. In fact, I went to his funeral in Chicago. I think I was one of about 10 white faces in a huge black audience, and nobody cared. In fact, probably very few even know about it, because that was just what you do to people, you know. Uh, and that's not the only case. Happens to be the worst case. But, uh, that's not happening now. Bad things are, but not that. You know, this had to do with the assassination and, you know, the use of force and by US forces in Iraq and borrowings from Israel. That's been reported in the press in the last couple of days, the US press and the British press, that they're, I mean, US government denies it, but reports are that they're getting Israeli intelligence to help them out with the control of the population. Frankly, I tend to think that the US government denials are probably accurate. The reason is that these kinds of vicious tactics are just second nature to military forces anyway. They don't have to get advice from anyone. But, and there, it's not that there's some, you know, sophisticated techniques that we couldn't think of in 10 minutes. There was a limited number of ways of controlling people by violence. So maybe the denials are accurate, but it's probable that they're interacting.

Uh, I, if you want to know what it is, I mean, they're, they're telling it straight out. So there's nothing for me to say. There was a front-page story, the lead story in the New York Times three or four days ago, a couple days ago, was by Dexter Filkins. And well, you read it yourself, but to me, it came straight out of, it seemed was coming straight out of the Nazi archives. I mean, it quoted US military officers as saying, uh, "The Arab mind understands only force and, you know, honor or something," and went on to say, "The way you have to control these people is by, us showing them that you can use force and crush them, and then they'll respect you." That's very familiar. I mean, you're all Harvard students, you've read history, you know exactly what page of history it comes from. Putting aside the Nazi archives, it comes straight out of the British Empire. Take a look at the, uh, Encyclopedia Britannica. I've got the edition that was given to me on my bar mitzvah, so it's an old edition, you know, it's 1939. But, but if you look at the 1939 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and you look at the section on India, uh, it's written by some British military officer who describes how, uh, uh, the Punjabis, the military, you know, cast in India, enjoyed being beaten up, and when the British beat the hell out of them, they really respected the British for that. And after that, they kind of, you know, follow what the British wanted. You think I'm exaggerating? You know, look it up. I, it doesn't say "beat the hell out of," but then that approximately says that. And that's the standard view about the natives. What you have to do is smash them in the face. They don't understand anything. They're barbarians. They like for, they love force, and they respect force. And when you do that, you got them under control. That's the Arab mind. You know, I mean, if something like that were said about the Jewish mind on the front page of the New York Times, you know, the country would explode. But, when you say it about the Arab mind, it's okay. In fact, you can find distinguished Harvard professors who write things not very different from that, and nobody cares. But, so yes, the tactics are familiar. If they're getting them from Israel, I don't know, maybe they are, but it's mostly second nature to conquerors.

So suppose the UN, let's see if I understood it. If the United States secured its own resources, what would its strategy be in the region? Exactly the same as it is now, because it has nothing to do with US access to those resources. And if you think about the history, you'll see that I started from 1945 when the US took over the region because it was a stupendous source of strategic power and the greatest material, one of the greatest material prizes in world history. Well, that would remain true if at that time the United States was the major, the North America was the major oil producer in the world. The US wasn't using those resources. In fact, the US remained the North America that includes the Gulf and so on, was the major oil producer until I think around 1970. But, but it still had to maintain control of those resources. This is control, not access. If you look at US intelligence projections, contemporary US intelligence projections for the next 15 years or so, they are public and worth looking at. They predict that the Persian Gulf will be even more important in the future. In fact, it'll provide about two-thirds of world energy resources in the next roughly 15 years. But the US won't rely on them. They say the US itself will rely on more stable West, um, Atlantic Basin resources like West Africa. It's one of the reasons for the concern and intervention in West Africa, West Africa and the Western Hemisphere. Again, that's one of the reasons for the concern about the turmoil in the Andes, which are sort of getting out of control and a very likely target of US military intervention because that's regarded as one of the potential major energy resources. Um, but even if the US, so, so they themselves are expecting to rely on resources that are less hazardous, you know, more stable, but they still want to control the most, you know, stupendous source of strategic power and one of the greatest material prizes in world history. Fact, if the US went to renewable energy tomorrow, I don't think policy would change. This is a lever of world control. It, uh, you control the Gulf energy resources, you pretty much control the world. And, and the material prize means huge profits. I mean, again, read this morning's, I think front page of the New York Times, yeah, front page, there's a story on how Halliburton is gouging you and your parents, uh, by charging ludicrous prices to, uh, import Kuwaiti oil into Iraq, about twice as much as Iraq and Kuwait pay. Yeah, that's a great material prize. It yields what one major historian of the oil industry called profits beyond the dream of avarice, and it still does for the future. That's even if

We use renewable energy, and the stupendous source of strategic power remains. Uh, controlling the world is not an easy business, you know. It's a tough job for those guys in Washington. Uh, the uh international society is not dominated by the United States. From an economic point of view, the United States is just one of a number of equals. Europe's approximately like the United States. Uh, Northeast Asia is, is has a greater gross domestic product than the US does, considerably greater, about 50% greater, and holds about half of us of global foreign exchange, and is the most dynamic region in the world. Also has resources. Actually, Laura Tyson, who was chair of the Council on Economic Advisors under Clinton, just described a couple days ago, described the world economy briefly, very succinctly, in four words. Uh, he said, "The world economy is based on the principle that America spends, Asia lends." That's more or less accurate, and that's a very fragile situation.

Uh, the, there's only one dimension in which the US is overwhelmingly dominant, namely violence. Uh, that's why, uh, the Bush administration, which happens to be rather extreme, but it's not a pretty narrow spectrum, does want the world to be organized on the basis of force. It makes very good sense, you know. You play your strong card, and the strong card for the United States is force, not, uh, economy, not culture, not other things. It's force. The US spends roughly about as much as the rest of the world combined in military force and is technologically far more advanced.

Right now, at the United Nations, if we had something like a free press in the country, what you'd be reading on the front page is what's going on at the, uh, General Assembly right now. Right now, uh, every day, uh, there are debates on, uh, the disarmament commit, the U, U, N. disarmament committee on disarmament and international security, or some such name, is having its meetings right now. And as usual, usual, you know, year after year, this goes on unreported. The world is trying to block the militarization of space and the increase of nuclear weapons, and the US is preventing it. That went on under Clinton, it's going on now. The US is moving onto militarization of space, which is extremely hazardous, may destroy all of us. I, that's no joke.

Uh, right after the US announced the National Security Strategy, September 2002, the invasion of Iraq, same time, uh, two months later, the Space Command publicly announced its plans for the next, I forget, 10 or 15 years, in which it said that the US will move from control of space to ownership of space. Well, those of you who've read the National Security Strategy know what that means. Uh, we don't just control the world, we own it. Uh, and space, we're going to own, which means no potential, no nobody else gets near it. It's going to be used for platforms for offensive weapons, highly destructive weapons, nuclear, non-nuclear. They've adopted a first strike doctrine. The world's under complete surveillance, you know, hypersonic drones tell you if somebody's crossing the street in, you know, Delhi or something like that. Uh, in theory, what's being worked on, uh, are systems which would enable a command post in the Colorado mountains to instantaneously attack and destroy any target in the world without warning, and they hope with impunity. Uh, reduces the need for forward military bases which cause various problems, people don't like them. Uh, that's, uh, you know, sitting right there.

So, yes, the dimension of force, uh, is, uh, is the dominant dimension, and the, the control over energy resources is a crucial part of this. Fifty years ago, George Kennan, one of the top planners then, pointed out that control over Middle East oil gives the United States what he called veto power. Uh, over, he was thinking of Japan at the time, but in fact, everyone. Uh, a lot of the maneuvering in the Middle East and Central Asia, if you really look at it closely, is about, you know, the direction in which the pipelines will go and who's going to control, uh, production and transit routes, and that has to do with controlling Europe and Asia, Northeast Asia particularly. Who understand it perfectly well, so they've been looking for their own independent access to energy resources all along. A lot of the maneuvering is about that.

Again, in this morning's New York Times, you can read, uh, Paul Wolfowitz's memo, uh, saying that Germany and France will not be permitted to take part in the, what's called the reconstruction of Iraq. Well, partly that's just a reflection of the, uh, unbelievably passionate hatred of democracy by Wolfowitz and the Bush administration and others like them. I, they're furious at France and Germany because France and Germany, the governments, took the same position as the overwhelming majority of the population. So therefore, they have to be punished. Uh, the good guys like Italy and Spain, uh, the government overruled an even larger majority of the population, so they got to be rewarded. Uh, it's kind of intriguing about the U.S. intellectual community that can go on alongside of, you know, odes to the love of democracy of Paul Wolfowitz and so on. So part of it is just the normal hatred of democracy, but it's more than that. France and Germany are the heartland of Europe, you know, that's the industrial, commercial, financial heart of Europe, and if they get access to the Middle East, that's no good because then they won't be under the thumb of the United States. Uh, we need that veto power.

So, go back to your question. We shift to renewable energy. I don't think anything would change. Who would the Palestinian leaders be with the greatest chance of negotiation success? Well, in my view, that's up to the Palestinians to decide, right? Uh, the, uh, and the Palestinians have decided. I mean, when Bush made his, uh, speech about democracy that we were all supposed to worship a couple of weeks ago, uh, uh, it was mostly ridiculed in the Middle East and in fact, most of the world outside of England, uh, be, uh, for very simple reasons. If you look at what he just, you know, he praised various democracies, you know, these countries are advancing toward democracy, these are not so good, and so on. Had absolutely nothing to do with democracy. Anybody who knows about the countries knows that no correlation, but it had a very good correlation to willingness to accept U.S. orders. So if you were following U.S. orders, you were progressing toward democracy, just kind of like Italy and Spain is distinct from France and Germany.

Uh, but what's striking about the Middle East is that there is one elected leader. There's one genuinely elected leader in the region, one, uh, elected by supervised elections, you know, probably not perfect, but doubt that they were worse than the 2000 elections. Uh, who did they elect? Well, Yasser Arafat. He's the one elected leader in the region. So what does the Bush administration have to say about him? Out, you know, that's because of our love of democracy and our grand vision about democracy. I mean, I don't like him personally, I wouldn't have voted for him, but it's not up to me, you know, that he was elected by the Palestinians. Uh, if you want to know which leader should negotiate, well, you know, let the Palestinians pick a leadership. They've already done it. Let them pick another one. See it, but let them do it, not Washington, not Paul Wolfowitz or other people whose contempt for democracy is goes beyond discussion. Let them do it themselves. Uh, I, I think there are better choices, but, you know, who am I to say? It's there for them to say. And in fact, as far as Arafat is concerned, whatever you think about him, he has, by, by, by comparison on these issues, by comparison with American or Israeli leaders, he's been, you know, far more willing to accept a diplomatic settlement. In fact, that's been considered the problem ever since the mid-'70s. He's been pressing for a political settlement.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 with U.S. backing again, otherwise they couldn't have done it, and killed about 20,000 people and destroyed most of the South, it had nothing to do with self-defense. They didn't pretend that it did. Uh, it had to do with getting rid of the PLO, uh, uh, which was becoming Arafat. As one of Israel's leading scholars on the Palestinians put it, very conservative guy, no, do, Yehoshua Porath, he said that Arafat's insistence on diplomacy and negotiations are what he called a veritable catastrophe for Israel. So we got to put an end to to it and return them to terror, which we like, but not negotiations, which we don't want. It was a war for the West Bank, it was called by the highest political and military echelons. Uh, yeah, because they were pressing for a political settlement. U.S. and Israel didn't want it. Uh, so if you want somebody to negotiate for a diplomatic settlement, well, you know, there's a choice. I mean, the people who, the Palestinians elected, who happens to have been trying to do it for the last, since the mid-'70s. My choice? No, but not, not up to me to decide.

So, the, the comment is that since 9/11, Israel has framed its, um, actions in the context of the war on terror. So anything it does is part of the U.S. war against terror, right? And the question is, how would that framing of the issues, you know, how would it affect U.S. government policy? Well, actually, U.S. government policy is so, like every state is so completely hypocritical, it doesn't make any difference. But the, uh, and the U.S. is not alone in this respect, but the, the framing, you're correct about the framing, but remember, it's not Israel, it's just about every country in the world. So Russia, for example, is, was carrying out vicious atrocities in Chechnya, immediately reconstructed what it was doing as part of the war on terror, figuring that they'd get a pat on the head from Washington, which they did. So the U.S. now supports, uh, openly, the, uh, Russian monstrous atrocities in Chechnya, and every other government in the world did approximately the same thing. I mean, Israel and the West Bank, Indonesia and, you know, everywhere. Uh, other governments like the United States or England, in fact, most, instituted some kind of repressive legislation to control their own populations, usually called protection against terrorism acts or, you know, Patriot Act or something like that. Had almost nothing to do with terrorism, had a lot to do with population control. So yes, the natural response of any power system, any state, to September 11th was to increase its power and repression under the pretext of defense against terror, and Israel did the same thing. But it's across the board. You have to look hard to find an exception.

Is Israel defending itself against terror? Well, you know, take a look. Every day, there's an article about the separation wall, this wall that's snaking through the West Bank. Uh, the, uh, Security Council and the General Assembly have tried to block it. U.S. stops it, vetoes it, as usual. And, uh, uh, the justification, I mean, it's leaving a couple hundred thousand Palestinians essentially in limbo, you know, they're deprived of their lands, they'll have to get out, but sooner or later, they'll get out. One of the leading Israeli commentators, Amir Harel, describes it as a step towards expulsion, probably is. It's described as a needed for protection of Israel, for security. Is it? I mean, think about it for a second. Think about it for one second. Suppose you wanted to build a wall to protect Israel, where would you put it? Well, you'd put it a couple of miles inside Israel. If you put the, a wall a couple of miles inside the green line, yeah, you could build it 100 feet high if you want, you could have the, uh, Israeli army patrolling on both sides, you could mine it with nuclear weapons, you do anything you want, and you wouldn't get one word of international protest, and nobody could pass it. It would be an impenetrable wall. So if security is the issue, that's what you do. I mean, you don't increase security by putting a couple hundred thousand Palestinians inside the, you know, the wall. Well, you know, that is so obvious that it really takes genius not to see it. Uh, now ask yourself, if there is a single comment anywhere pointing out that this thing can't possibly be for protection of Israelis, it's impossible. That's not where you'd put it. Uh, so why not do it that way? Well, because if you do it that way, you don't steal Palestinian land. You inconvenience Israelis who'd have to go through gates instead of Palestinians who have to go through gates that are never open. Uh, so therefore, it's no good. Well, that tells you what the wall is about, okay? Uh, has nothing to do with security, except for security for the Israeli settlements, which are illegal anyway. But so it's just a way of taking over of advancing the U.S.-Israeli program of gradually integrating the valuable parts of the territories inside Israel now under the pretext of security. But the pretext is so ludicrous in this case, you really have to admire the commentators who can't see it, you know. And as far as I'm aware, that's 100%. I've never seen a word pointing out the obvious, which is obvious on a moment's reflection, that if you want a wall that's going to secure Israelis from West Bank infiltration, you put it two miles inside Israel. Pretty obvious, isn't it? Can you think of a fallacy?

Thank you very much, Professor Chomsky. If I could just go, a lot of the sources which you quoted from recent news stories are on that website, so it's a good resource because President Trotsky can't be here for all of us every day. Just my one question. The Associated Press this morning, and this has been going on for a while, talked about how OPEC is thinking of changing to the, is this a big deal or is, yeah, it's a big deal. It's a very big deal. I mean, if, if you look at the international financial, you know, discussions, the euro is sort of creeping up on the dollar in terms of value. I mean, by now, you know, it's overvalued, but I mean, as a currency that people are willing to rely on, it's creeping up on the dollar. If you look at bonds that are issued, it used to be overwhelmingly dollar, now it's close to 50-50, dollar, euro. And in many respects, the euro is a more stable currency, safer currency. So Europe, for example, doesn't have the huge U.S. trade deficit. It's not the case that Asia lends and Europe spends, to quote Laura Tyson. And the people understand that, uh, sooner or later, uh, Asia, OPEC, and others are going to start probably using a basket of currencies, not just the dollar, but a mixture, and they might shift over to the euro. The effect of that on the U.S. economy, I mean, nobody can really predict, but it could be extremely serious. The U.S. economy is a very fragile system, you know, it's a, it's a very rich country and enormous advantages, but the way it's being handled economically is just a disaster, you know. Uh, the, and, and the world knows it. They're willing to support it for some time, but when that all breaks down, nobody knows. And the potential that OPEC might switch to even in part to the euro, as it might do, uh, is serious. In fact, that's one of the reasons I think why the U.S. wants to ensure military control over the region, so that the facade doesn't get any funny ideas. I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave. Sorry. [Applause]