I found the previous link, the review of Kissinger’s memoirs in the White House by Chomsky, in an introduction to his book on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “The Fateful Triangle”. Originally published in 1983, it was revised in 1999 and again in 2015. The book is, as Edward Said said, “maybe the most ambitious book ever attempted on the struggle between Zionism and Palestinians involving the United States.” No doubt, the book is an epic. I will be writing about a few more excerpts from it in the future, but this particular one from the chapter “Peace for Galilee” caught my attention today. It explains why Israel launched the 1982 war against Lebanon, their most bloody war.
The reasoning is given by Yeshouah Porath: It seems to me,” he writes, “that the decision of the government (or more precisely, its two leaders [Begin and Sharon]) flowed from the very fact that the cease-fire had been observed.” This posed a threat, far worse than actual terrorism, the success of PLO discipline meant that they might become partners in peace, a catastrophe for the Israelis. They therefore had to launch an attack, in order to restore the PLO to their old terrorising ways, to maintain the pretext for the hold on the occupied territories.
What’s interesting is that a similar pretext has to be maintained within Gaza. Embarrassingly to Israel, Hamas keeps proposing peace on the basis of a two-state settlement. This can never be acknowledged within Western media, even though it was publicly proclaimed by Hamas repeatedly, since 2006. The fact that Hamas lived up to many ceasefires is also usually omitted, even though it was acknowledged by Israeli officials.
There is a constant need to dehumanise the inhabitants of Gaza and Hamas, even though their fight has been a just one, against a brutal conquering and colonising force. I still think that peace between Hamas and Israel is possible, if it were permitted. It’s going to take some time before any chinks appear in the Israeli’s ideological armour though.