 Howard's extremely simplistic statement can only be characterised as both outrageous and dangerous. Whether he is lying, ignorant of the facts or performing a mouthpiece function for the US – all three seem likely.
The map of Israel, showing Israeli and Palestinian controlled areas, is worth looking at. As Chomsky notes, it is rarely seen in the media for obvious reasons – it gives away the game and graphically reveals the lie about the “generous terms” of Oslo.
Professor Ian Bickerton, at the Palestine-Israel lecture series at Sydney University showed this map and identified where useful maps can be found. It is on the Oslo Agreement page of The Department For Jewish Zionist Education site:
http://www.jajz-ed.org.il/100/maps/oslo.html
As Chomsky points out, Israel doesn't bother to hide what it is doing, but it cloaks the deeds in deceptive terms. One of his favourite phrases is, “It's all there if you care to see it”.
Before dealing with Oslo, there's a little background included from the speech, concerning the term, “rejectionist”, UN Resolution 242 and it's “re-interpretation” by the US and Israel.
Excerpted from a speech delivered at The University of Toledo, March 4, 2001 - Prospects for Peace in the Middle East, Noam Chomsky
“No peace without justice; no justice without truth”
“UN 242 calls for a settlement among existing states of the region. The agreement was, to put in simple terms, that there should be full peace in return for full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.” But UN 242 “calls for recognition of Israel's right to live in peace and security within recognized borders, but says nothing about rights of the Palestinians, apart from a vague allusion to the problem of refugees.” Chomsky calls this “rejectionist”, the traditional policy that Israel is fond of pointing to, used to characterise the rejection of the legitimacy of the Israeli state. In other words, Chomsky states the obvious that is never reported – there are two rejectionist policies.
In 1971 the US, who up until then had supported UN 242, modified its policy. “President Sadat had taken power in Egypt, and he offered a settlement in terms of UN 242 – in terms of official US policy: full peace in return for full Israeli withdrawal” Well, the US had a choice. Was it going to accept that or was it going to reject UN 242? It was understood that Sadat's proposal was, as Israel put it, “a genuine peace offer”, a “milestone on the path to peace” as Yitzhak Rabin, then Israeli Ambassador to the US, describes it in his memoirs.
“The US had a decision to make. There was an internal confrontation. Henry Kissinger won out, and Washington adopted his policy of “stalemate”: No negotiations, just force. So the US effectively rejected UN 242 in February 1971 and insisted that it means “withdrawal insofar as the US and Israel decide.” That's the operative meaning of UN 242 under US global rule since 1971
That leads in various paths to Oslo, and the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, where the Declaration of Principles (DOP) was accepted with much fanfare in what the press described as “a day of awe,” and so on. The DOP merits a close look. It outlines clearly what is coming, with no ambiguity. For what it's worth, I don't say this in retrospect: I wrote an article about it at once, which appeared in October 1993. There have been few surprises since.
The DOP states that the “permanent status,” the ultimate settlement down the road, is to be based on UN 242 and UN 242 alone. That's very crucial. Anyone with any familiarity with Middle East diplomacy knew on that day exactly what was coming. First, UN 242 means “partial withdrawal, as the US determines”; the Kissingerian revision. And “UN 242 alone” means UN 242 and not the other UN resolutions which call for Palestinian rights alongside Israel. Recall that 242 itself is strictly rejectionist.
“The primary issue of diplomacy since the mid-1970s had been whether a diplomatic settlement should be based on UN 242 alone, or UN 242 supplemented with the other resolutions that the US had vetoed at the Security Council, and (effectively) vetoed at the General Assembly. And the second issue was whether 242 would have the original interpretation, or the operative US interpretation after it rejected Sadat's 1971 peace offer.
“In the DOP, the US announced firmly and clearly that the permanent settlement would be based on UN 242 alone, keeping to Washington's unilateral rejectionism: anything else is off the table. And since this is a unilateral power play, 242 means “as the US decides.” There was no ambiguity. One could choose to be deluded – many did so. But that was a choice, and an unwise one, particularly for the victims.
“So matters continue. One can't really accuse Israel of violating the Oslo agreements - except in detail. It continued to settle the occupied territories and integrate them within Israel. That means you and I did it, because the US funds it knowingly, and the US provides crucial diplomatic and military support for these gross violations of international law. The successive agreements spell out the details. They are worth a close look. I reviewed the main one in print in 1996, if you happen to be interested. The details are striking, including the purposeful humiliation built into them. And they have been fairly closely implemented
In February 1996, towards the end of Peres's term, the peak of “dovishness,” he announced an expanded settlement program in the territories. I'll read it because it's essentially was happening now. This was February 1996. He said, “It is no secret that the government's stand, which will be our ultimate demand, is that as regards the Jerusalem areas – Ma'ale Adumim, Givat Ze'ev, Beitar, and Gush Etzion – they will be an integral part of Israel's future map. There is no doubt about this.” He also announced the building of what Israel calls Har Homa, that's the last section around Jerusalem, mostly expropriated from Arabs. That was put on hold under the Netanyahu government because of strong international and domestic opposition. But the Peres project was picked up again by Barak, and proceeded with no protest.
“A look at the map will explain what this means. The « Jerusalem area, » so defined (as it had already been by Yitzhak Rabin, after Oslo), effectively partitions the West Bank: the city of Ma'ale Adumim was developed primarily for this purpose, and addition of other parts of the « Jerusalem areas » merely firms up the effective partition.”
“Ben-Eliezer also explained in February 1996 that Labor « builds quietly, » with the full protection of the Prime Minister, not ostentatiously like the rival Likud coalition. The Prime Minister can be Rabin, Peres, Barak (who broke all records in construction) or anyone else, but « we build quietly »: that's the crucial phrase. And that is the reason why the US always prefers Labor to Likud. Labor does it quietly. They're the « doves. » Likud tends to be arrogant and noisy about it, and that makes it harder to pretend that we don't know what we're actually doing. So Labor's always preferable”
“Without going into the details, you'll notice that in all of the current discussion about the remarkable negotiations and the « forthcoming » and « generous concessions » of Clinton and Barak, there are some notable omissions. One is maps. Try finding a map in one of the US newspapers describing what's happening. Well, the reason there aren't any maps, I suppose, is because what's being implemented under the Camp David proposal, and Clinton's last plan and Barak's plan, is pretty much what Ben Eliezer described. The places I mentioned are pretty much those being incorporated within Israel, along with others. A second crucial omission is that there cannot be « generous concessions » because there cannot be territorial concessions at all, any more than when Russia withdrew from Afghanistan or Germany from occupied France.”
“What's called « Jerusalem » extends extensively in all directions, separating Ramallah to the north from Bethlehem to the south, and effectively partitioning the West Bank. Ma'ale Adumim is called in the US press « a neighborhood of Jerusalem »; in fact, it is a city constructed by the US and Israel, primarily during the Oslo period, well to the east of Jerusalem. Its planned borders are supposed to reach to a few kilometers from Jericho. Jericho itself is now surrounded by a seven-foot deep trench to prevent people from getting in and out—and the same is planned for other cities.”
“That means that the « Jerusalem » salient effectively bisects the West Bank, separating the Palestinian sections into two enclaves; and the whole Palestinian region is separated from the traditional center of Palestinian life in Jerusalem (now vastly expanded, with Israeli settlement only). There's another salient to the North, which effectively separates the northern and central regions. Discussion of Gaza is vague, but judging by settlement and development patterns, something similar is probably planned. Remember that all the settlements are within vast infrastructure projects designed to integrate them within Israel and remove West Bank Palestinians from sight, contained within their enclaves.”
“These are the forthcoming and generous concessions. They're well understood. I'll just end with the comment by one of the leading Israeli doves, Shlomo Ben-Ami, who was the chief negotiator under Barak and is indeed a Labor dove—pretty much at the extreme. In an academic book written in 1998 in Hebrew, just before he entered the government, he pointed out, perfectly accurately, that the goal of the Oslo negotiations is to establish a situation of « permanent neocolonial dependency » for the occupied territories. In Israel, it's commonly described as a Bantustan solution—if you think about South African policy, it's similar in essentials.”
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