<html>
<body>
<font size=3><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">January 28,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Behind the
Bloodbath in Gaza <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Foiling Another Palestinian "Peace Offensive"
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By NORMAN
FINKELSTEIN <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">E</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>arly speculation on the motive behind
Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 and continued
till 18 January 2009 centered on the upcoming elections in Israel.
The jockeying for votes was no doubt a factor in this Sparta-like society
consumed by “revenge and the thirst for blood,”<a name="_ednref1"></a>
where killing Arabs is a sure crowd-pleaser. (Polls during the war
showed that 80-90 percent of Israeli Jews supported
it.)<a name="_ednref2"></a> But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy
pointed out on <i>Democracy Now!</i>, “Israel went through a very similar
war…two-and-a-half years ago [in Lebanon], when there were no
elections.”<a name="_ednref3"></a> When crucial state interests
are at stake, Israeli ruling elites seldom launch major operations for
narrowly electoral gains. It is true that Prime Minister Menachem
Begin’s decision to bomb the Iraqi OSIRAK reactor in 1981 was an
electoral ploy, but the strategic stakes in the strike on Iraq were puny;
contrary to widespread belief, Saddam Hussein had not embarked on a
nuclear weapons program prior to the bombing.<a name="_ednref4"></a>
The fundamental motives behind the latest Israeli attack on Gaza
lie elsewhere: (1) in the need to restore Israel’s “deterrence capacity,”
and (2) in the threat posed by a new Palestinian “peace offensive.”
<br><br>
Israel’s “larger concern” in the current offensive, <i>New York</i>
<i>Times</i> Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner reported, quoting
Israeli sources, was to “re-establish Israeli deterrence,” because “its
enemies are less afraid of it than they once were, or should
be.”<a name="_ednref5"></a> Preserving its deterrence capacity has
always loomed large in Israeli strategic doctrine. Indeed, it was
the main impetus behind Israel’s first-strike against Egypt in June 1967
that resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank).
To justify the onslaught on Gaza, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote
that “[m]any Israelis feel that the walls…are closing in…much as they
felt in early June 1967.”<a name="_ednref6"></a> Ordinary Israelis
no doubt felt threatened in June 1967, butas Morris surely knowsthe
Israeli leadership experienced no such trepidation. After Israel
threatened and laid plans to attack Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel
Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping, but
Israel made almost no use of the Straits (apart from the passage of oil,
of which Israel then had ample stocks) and, anyhow, Nasser did not in
practice enforce the blockade, vessels passing freely through the Straits
within days of his announcement. In addition, multiple U.S.
intelligence agencies had concluded that the Egyptians did not intend to
attack Israel and that, in the improbable case that they did, alone or in
concert with other Arab countries, Israel wouldin President Lyndon
Johnson’s words“whip the hell out of them.” The head of the Mossad
told senior American officials on 1 June 1967 that “there were no
differences between the U.S. and the Israelis on the military
intelligence picture or its interpretation.”<a name="_ednref7"></a>
The predicament for Israel was rather the growing perception in
the Arab world, spurred by Nasser’s radical nationalism and climaxing in
his defiant gestures in May 1967, that it would no longer have to follow
Israeli orders. Thus, Divisional Commander Ariel Sharon admonished
those in the Israeli cabinet hesitant to launch a first-strike that
Israel was losing its “deterrence capability…our main weapon<i>the fear
of us</i>.”<a name="_ednref8"></a> Israel unleashed the June 1967
war “to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence” (Israeli strategic
analyst Zeev Maoz).<a name="_ednref9"></a> <br><br>
The expulsion of the Israeli occupying army by Hezbollah in May 2000
posed a major new challenge to Israel’s deterrence capacity. The
fact that Israel suffered a humiliating defeat, one celebrated throughout
the Arab world, made another war well-nigh inevitable. Israel
almost immediately began planning for the next round, and in summer 2006
found a pretext when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers (several
others were killed in the firefight) and demanded in exchange the release
of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Although Israel unleashed the
fury of its air force and geared up for a ground invasion, it suffered
yet another ignominious defeat. A respected American military
analyst despite being partial to Israel nonetheless concluded, “the IAF,
the arm of the Israel military that had once destroyed whole air forces
in a few days, not only proved unable to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes
but even to do enough damage to prevent Hezbollah’s rapid recovery”; that
“once ground forces did cross into Lebanon…, they failed to overtake
Hezbollah strongholds, even those close to the border”; that “in terms of
Israel’s objectives, the kidnapped Israeli soldiers were neither rescued
nor released;</font><font size=3>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>Hezbollah’s rocket fire
was</font><font size=3> </font><font face="Verdana" size=2>never
suppressed,</font><font size=3> </font><font face="Verdana" size=2> not
even its long-range fire…; and Israeli ground forces were badly shaken
and bogged down by a well-equipped and capable foe”; and that “more
troops and a massive ground invasion would indeed have produced a
different outcome, but the notion that somehow that effort would have
resulted in a more decisive victory over Hezbollah…has no basis in
historical example or logic.” The juxtaposition of several figures
further highlights the magnitude of the setback: Israel deployed 30,000
troops as against 2,000 regular Hezbollah fighters and 4,000 irregular
Hezbollah and non-Hezbollah fighters; Israel delivered and fired 162,000
weapons whereas Hezbollah fired 5,000 weapons (4,000 rockets and
projectiles at Israel and 1,000 antitank missiles inside
Lebanon).<a name="_ednref10"></a> Moreover, “the vast majority of
the fighters who defended villages such as Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, and
Maroun al-Ras were not, in fact, regular Hezbollah fighters and in some
cases were not even members of Hezbollah,” and “many of Hezbollah’s best
and most skilled fighters never saw action, lying in wait along the
Litani River with the expectation that the IDF assault would be much
deeper and arrive much faster than it did.”<a name="_ednref11"></a>
Yet another indication of Israel’s reversal of fortune was that,
unlike any of its previous armed conflicts, in the final stages of the
2006 war it fought not in defiance of a U.N. ceasefire resolution but in
the hope of a U.N. resolution to rescue it.</font><font size=3> <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>After the 2006 Lebanon war Israel was
itching to take on Hezbollah again, but did not yet have a military
option against it. In mid-2008 Israel desperately sought to
conscript the U.S. for an attack on Iran, which would also decapitate
Hezbollah, and thereby humble the main challengers to its regional
hegemony. Israel and its quasi-official emissaries such as Benny
Morris threatened that if the U.S. did not go along “then
non-conventional weaponry will have to be used,” and “many innocent
Iranians will die.”<a name="_ednref12"></a> To Israel’s chagrin
and humiliation, the attack never materialized and Iran has gone its
merry way, while the credibility of Israel’s capacity to terrorize
slipped another notch. It was high time to find a defenseless
target to annihilate. Enter Gaza, Israel’s favorite shooting
gallery. Even there the feebly armed Islamic movement Hamas had
defiantly resisted Israeli diktat, in June 2008 even compelling Israel to
agree to a ceasefire.<br><br>
During the 2006 Lebanon war Israel flattened the southern suburb of
Beirut known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah commanded much popular
support. In the war’s aftermath Israeli military officers began
referring to the “Dahiya strategy”: “We shall pulverize the 160 Shiite
villages [in Lebanon] that have turned into Shiite army bases,” the IDF
Northern Command Chief explained, “and we shall not show mercy when it
comes to hitting the national infrastructure of a state that, in
practice, is controlled by Hezbollah.” In the event of hostilities,
a reserve Colonel at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies
chimed in, Israel needs “to act immediately, decisively, and with force
that is disproportionate….Such a response aims at inflicting damage and
meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive
reconstruction processes.” The new strategy was to be used against
all of Israel’s regional adversaries who had waxed defiant“the
Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all
Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad”but Gaza was the prime
target for this blitzkrieg-cum-bloodbath strategy. “Too bad it did
not take hold immediately after the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the
first rocket barrages,” a respected Israeli columnist lamented.
“Had we immediately adopted the Dahiya strategy, we would have likely
spared ourselves much trouble.” After a Palestinian rocket attack,
Israel’s Interior Minister urged in late September 2008, “the IDF
should…decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level
it.”<a name="_ednref13"></a> And, insofar as the Dahiya strategy
could not be inflicted just yet on Lebanon and Iran, it was predictably
pre-tested in Gaza. <br><br>
The operative plan for the Gaza bloodbath can be gleaned from
authoritative statements after the war got underway: “What we have to do
is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations
that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are
enabling them to fire and hide” (reserve Major-General); “After this
operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza”
(Deputy IDF Chief of Staff); “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a
legitimate target” (IDF Spokesperson’s Office).<a name="_ednref14"></a>
Whereas Israel killed a mere 55 Lebanese during the first two days
of the 2006 war, the Israeli media exulted at Israel’s “shock and awe”
(<i>Maariv</i>)<a name="_ednref15"></a> as it killed more than 300
Palestinians in the first two days of the attack on Gaza. Several
days into the slaughter an informed Israeli strategic analyst observed,
“The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by
hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended
to kill a great many of them, and succeeded.”<a name="_ednref16"></a>
Morris could barely contain his pride at “Israel’s highly
efficient air assault on Hamas.”<a name="_ednref17"></a> The
Israeli columnist B. Michael was less impressed by the dispatch of
helicopter gunships and jet planes “over a giant prison and firing at its
people”<a name="_ednref18"></a> for example, “70…traffic cops at their
graduation ceremony, young men in desperate search of a livelihood who
thought they’d found it in the police and instead found death from the
skies.”<a name="_ednref19"></a> <br><br>
As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N.
sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless
civilian population (one-third of the 1,200 reported casualties were
children), Israeli commentators gloated that “Gaza is to Lebanon as the
second sitting for an exam is to the firsta second chance to get it
right,” and that this time around Israel had “hurled [Gaza] back,” not 20
years as it promised to do in Lebanon, but “into the 1940s.
Electricity is available only for a few hours a day”; that “Israel
regained its deterrence capabilities” because “the war in Gaza has
compensated for the shortcomings of the [2006] Second Lebanon War”; and
that “There is no doubt that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is upset
these days….There will no longer be anyone in the Arab world who can
claim that Israel is weak.”<a name="_ednref20"></a> <br><br>
<i>New York Times </i>foreign affairs expert Thomas Friedman joined in
the chorus of hallelujahs.<a name="_ednref21"></a> Israel in fact
won the 2006 Lebanon war, according to Friedman, because it had inflicted
“substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at
large,” thereby administering an “education” to Hezbollah: fearing the
Lebanese people’s wrath, Hezbollah would “think three times next time”
before defying Israel. He expressed hope that Israel was likewise
“trying to ‘educate’ Hamas by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas
militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.” To justify the
targeting of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure Friedman
asserted that Israel had no other option because “Hezbollah created a
very ‘flat’ military network…deeply embedded in the local towns and
villages,” and that because “Hezbollah nested among civilians, the only
long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the
civilians…to restrain Hezbollah in the future.” <br>
Leaving aside Friedman’s hollow coinageswhat does “flat” mean?and
leaving aside that he alleged that the killing of civilians was
unavoidable but <i>also recommends targeting civilians</i> as a
“deterrence” strategy: is it even true that Hezbollah was “embedded in,”
“nested among,” and “intertwined” with the Lebanese civilian
population? <br><br>
Here’s what Human Rights Watch concluded after an exhaustive
investigation: “we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of
its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in
uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases
Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting
started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from
pre-prepared positions outside villages.” And again, “in all but a
few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters
had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to
contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli
forces.” Indeed, “Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support
the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from
tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote,
unpopulated valleys.”<a name="_ednref22"></a> <br><br>
A U.S. Army War College study based largely on interviews with Israeli
participants in the Lebanon war similarly found that “the key
battlefields in the land campaign south of the Litani River were mostly
devoid of civilians, and IDF participants consistently report little or
no meaningful intermingling of Hezbollah fighters and
noncombatants. Nor is there any systematic reporting of Hezbollah
using civilians in the combat zone as shields.” On a related note,
the authors report that “the great majority of Hezbollah’s fighters wore
uniforms. In fact, their equipment and clothing were remarkably
similar to many state militaries’desert or green fatigues, helmets, web
vests, body armor, dog tags, and rank insignia.”<a name="_ednref23"></a>
<br>
Friedman further asserted that, “rather than confronting Israel’s Army
head-on,” Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population to
provoke Israeli retaliatory strikes, inevitably killing Lebanese
civilians and “inflaming the Arab-Muslim street.” Yet, numerous
studies have shown,<a name="_ednref24"></a> and Israeli officials
themselves conceded<a name="_ednref25"></a> that, during its guerrilla
war against the Israeli occupying army, Hezbollah only targeted Israeli
civilians <i>after</i> Israel targeted Lebanese civilians. In
conformity with past practice Hezbollah started firing rockets toward
Israeli civilian concentrations during the 2006 war only after Israel
inflicted heavy casualties on Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah leader
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah avowed that it would target Israeli civilians “as
long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red
lines.”<a name="_ednref26"></a> <br><br>
If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure
during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because
Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing the civilian
population was a relatively cost-free method of “education,” much to be
preferred over fighting a real foe and suffering heavy casualties,
although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from
achieving a victory on the battlefield. In the case of Gaza it was
able both to “educate” the population and achieve a military victory
becausein the words of Gideon Levythe “fighting in Gaza” was <br>
“war deluxe.” Compared with previous wars, it is child’s playpilots
bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers
shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat
engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected
vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is
fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization
that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a
fight.<a name="_ednref27"></a> <br><br>
The justification put forth by Friedman in the pages of the <i>Times</i>
for targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure amounted to
apologetics for state terrorism.<a name="_ednref28"></a> It might
be recalled that although Hitler had stripped Nazi propagandist Julius
Streicher of all his political power by 1940, and his newspaper <i>Der
St?rmer</i> had a circulation of only some 15,000 during the war, the
International Tribunal at Nuremberg nonetheless sentenced him to death
for his murderous incitement. <br><br>
Beyond restoring its deterrence capacity, Israel’s main goal in the Gaza
slaughter was to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian
moderation. For the past three decades the international community
has consistently supported a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict
that calls for two states based on a full Israeli withdrawal to its June
1967 border, and a “just resolution” of the refugee question based on the
right of return and compensation. The vote on the annual U.N.
General Assembly resolution, “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of
Palestine,” supporting these terms for resolving the conflict in 2008 was
164 in favor, 7 against (Israel, United States, Australia, Marshall
Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau), and 3 abstentions. At the
regional level the Arab League in March 2002 unanimously put forth a
peace initiative on this basis, which it has subsequently
reaffirmed. In recent times Hamas has repeatedly signaled its own
acceptance of such a settlement. For example, in March 2008 Khalid
Mishal, head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, stated in an
interview:<br><br>
There is an opportunity to deal with this conflict in a manner different
than Israel and, behind it, the U.S. is dealing with it today.
There is an opportunity to achieve a Palestinian national consensus on a
political program based on the 1967 borders, and this is an exceptional
circumstance, in which most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a
state on the 1967 borders….There is also an Arab consensus on this
demand, and this is a historic situation. But no one is taking
advantage of this opportunity. No one is moving to cooperate with
this opportunity. Even this minimum that has been accepted by the
Palestinians and the Arabs has been rejected by Israel and by the
U.S.<a name="_ednref29"></a> <br><br>
Israel is fully cognizant that the Hamas Charter is not an insurmountable
obstacle to a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. “[T]he
Hamas leadership has recognized that its ideological goal is not
attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future,” a former Mossad
head recently observed. “[T]hey are ready and willing to see the
establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of
1967….They know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with
their cooperation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the
game: They will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their
original ideological goals.”<a name="_ednref30"></a> <br><br>
In addition, Hamas was “careful to maintain the ceasefire” it entered
into with Israel in June 2008, according to an official Israeli
publication, despite Israel’s reneging on the crucial component of the
truce that it ease the economic siege of Gaza. “The lull was
sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by
rogue terrorist organizations,” the source continues. “At the same time,
the [Hamas] movement tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement on the
other terrorist organizations and to prevent them from violating
it.”<a name="_ednref31"></a> Moreover, Hamas was “interested in
renewing the relative calm with Israel” (Shin Bet head Yuval
Diskin).<a name="_ednref32"></a> <br><br>
The Islamic movement could thus be trusted to stand by its word, making
it a credible negotiating partner, while its apparent ability to extract
concessions from Israel, unlike the hapless Palestinian Authority doing
Israel’s bidding but getting no returns, enhanced Hamas’s stature among
Palestinians. For Israel these developments constituted a veritable
disaster. It could no longer justify shunning Hamas, and it would
be only a matter of time before international pressure in particular from
the Europeans would be exerted on it to negotiate. The prospect of
an incoming U.S. administration negotiating with Iran and Hamas, and
moving closer to the international consensus for settling the
Israel-Palestine conflict, which some U.S. policymakers now
advocate,<a name="_ednref33"></a> would have further highlighted Israel’s
intransigence. In an alternative scenario, speculated on by
Nasrallah, the incoming American administration plans to convene an
international peace conference of “Americans, Israelis, Europeans and
so-called Arab moderates” to impose a settlement. The one obstacle
is “Palestinian resistance and the Hamas government in Gaza,” and
“getting rid of this stumbling block is…the true goal of the
war.”<a name="_ednref34"></a> <br><br>
In either case, Israel needed to provoke Hamas into breaking the truce,
and then radicalize or destroy it, thereby eliminating it as a legitimate
negotiating partner. It is not the first time Israel confronted
such a diabolical threatan Arab League peace initiative, Palestinian
support for a two-state settlement and a Palestinian ceasefireand not
the first time it embarked on provocation and war to overcome
it.<br><br>
In the mid-1970s the PLO mainstream began supporting a two-state
settlement on the June 1967 border. In addition, the PLO,
headquartered in Lebanon, was strictly adhering to a truce with Israel
that had been negotiated in July 1981.<a name="_ednref35"></a> In
August 1981 Saudi Arabia unveiled, and the Arab League subsequently
approved, a peace plan based on the two-state
settlement.<a name="_ednref36"></a> Israel reacted in September
1981 by stepping up preparations to destroy the
PLO.<a name="_ednref37"></a> In his analysis of the buildup to the
1982 Lebanon war, Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv reported that
Yasser Arafat was contemplating a historic compromise with the “Zionist
state,” whereas “all Israeli cabinets since 1967” as well as “leading
mainstream doves” opposed a Palestinian state. Fearing diplomatic
pressures, Israel maneuvered to sabotage the two-state settlement.
It conducted punitive military raids “deliberately out of proportion”
against “Palestinian and Lebanese civilians” in order to weaken “PLO
moderates,” strengthen the hand of Arafat’s “radical rivals,” and
guarantee the PLO’s “inflexibility.” However, Israel eventually had
to choose between a pair of stark options: “a political move leading to a
historic compromise with the PLO, or preemptive military action against
it.” <br><br>
To fend off Arafat’s “peace offensive”Yaniv’s telling phraseIsrael
embarked on military action in June 1982. The Israeli invasion “had been
preceded by more than a year of effective ceasefire with the PLO,” but
after murderous Israeli provocations, the last of which left as many as
200 civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s
hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, causing a single Israeli
casualty.<a name="_ednref38"></a> Although Israel used the PLO’s
resumption of attacks as the pretext for its invasion, Yaniv concluded
that the “<i>raison d’être</i> of the entire operation” was “destroying
the PLO as a political force capable of claiming a Palestinian state on
the West Bank.”<a name="_ednref39"></a> It deserves passing notice
that in his new history of the “peace process,” Martin Indyk, former U.S.
ambassador to Israel, provides this capsule summary of the sequence of
events just narrated: “In 1982, Arafat’s terrorist activities eventually
provoked the Israeli government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon into a
full-scale invasion of Lebanon.”<a name="_ednref40"></a> <br><br>
Fast forward to 2008. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated
in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary
period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce “harms the Israeli strategic
goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the
movement.”<a name="_ednref41"></a> Translation: a protracted
ceasefire that enhanced Hamas’s credibility would have undermined
Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank. As
far back as March 2007 Israel had decided on attacking Hamas, and only
negotiated the June truce because “the Israeli army needed time to
prepare.”<a name="_ednref42"></a> Once all the pieces were in
place, Israel only lacked a pretext. On 4 November, while the
American media were riveted on election day, Israel broke the ceasefire
by killing seven Palestinian militants, on the flimsy excuse that Hamas
was digging a tunnel to abduct Israeli soldiers, and knowing full well
that its operation would provoke Hamas into hitting back. “Last
week’s ‘ticking tunnel,’ dug ostensibly to facilitate the abduction of
Israeli soldiers,” <i>Haaretz</i> reported in mid-November<br><br>
was not a clear and present danger: Its existence was always known and
its use could have been prevented on the Israeli side, or at least the
soldiers stationed beside it removed from harm’s way. It is
impossible to claim that those who decided to blow up the tunnel were
simply being thoughtless. The military establishment was aware of
the immediate implications of the measure, as well as of the fact that
the policy of “controlled entry” into a narrow area of the Strip leads to
the same place: an end to the lull. That is policynot a tactical
decision by a commander on the ground.<a name="_ednref43"></a> <br><br>
After Hamas predictably resumed its rocket attacks “[i]n retaliation”
(Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information
Center),<a name="_ednref44"></a> Israel could embark on yet another
murderous invasion in order to foil yet another Palestinian peace
offensive. <br><br>
<b>Norman Finkelstein</b> is author of five books, including
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859844421/counterpunchmaga">
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine
Conflict</a>
,<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520245989/counterpunchmaga">
Beyond Chutzpah</a> and
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/185984488X/counterpunchmaga">
The Holocaust Industry</a>, which have been translated into more than 40
foreign editions. He is the son of Holocaust survivors. This article is
an edited extract of the views of Finkelstein given at
<a href="http://www.democracynow.org/">DemocracyNow.org</a>. His website
is
<a href="http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/">www.NormanFinkelstein.com</a>
<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>