— Just Look at How He Aids Israel’s Atrocities.
Alternet just posted Noam Chomsky’s latest analysis of the state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under the above title, replacing the hope for peace many people retain, with a well-articulated pessimism about whether a settlement will ever be achieved in the Middle East. Summarizing the analysis,
Chomsky exposes how the U.S. and Israel have been acting in tandem to extend and deepen the occupation of Palestine.
The article was also published at Huffington Post under the equally pessimistic title, A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won’t)
The first three paragraphs of Chomsky’s article are quoted (click the above sources for the full article):
The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world’s conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders — with “minor and mutual modifications,” to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.
The basic principles have been accepted by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states (who go on to call for full normalization of relations), the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran), and relevant non-state actors (including Hamas). A settlement along these lines was first proposed at the U.N. Security Council in January 1976 by the major Arab states. Israel refused to attend the session. The U.S. vetoed the resolution, and did so again in 1980. The record at the General Assembly since is similar.
There was one important and revealing break in U.S.-Israeli rejectionism. After the failed Camp David agreements in 2000, President Clinton recognized that the terms he and Israel had proposed were unacceptable to any Palestinians. That December, he proposed his “parameters”: imprecise, but more forthcoming. He then stated that both sides had accepted the parameters, while expressing reservations.
Chomsky was once introduced by the late British playwright, Harold Pinter, as having a penchant for telling the truth. He does.
