The Israeli military, citing preliminary reports from the scene, said soldiers saw an armed man and shot him. Palestinian security said the Israeli soldiers had entered Qabatiyeh, near the West Bank town of Jenin, on Tuesday night to carry out an arrest raid. On Wednesday morning, children went over to one of the houses where the Israeli soldiers had taken up position, and began to throw stones, Palestinian security forces said..

Soldiers opened fire from the house, and shot Mujahed Al Simadi through the chest, they said. He died immediately, they added.

The Israeli military confirmed the stone throwing, but said soldiers also heard explosions and identified an armed person, firing at him from inside a house.

It said it was investigating Palestinian reports that soldiers shot a boy holding a toy gun.

Clashes between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers broke out after the killing.

The officials also argue that a close look at the election results shows that Hamas won a smaller mandate than previously understood.

The officials and diplomats, who said this approach was being discussed at the highest levels of the State Department and the Israeli government, spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

They say Hamas will be given a choice: recognize Israel's right to exist, forswear violence and accept previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements — as called for by the United Nations and the West — or face isolation and collapse.

Opinion polls show that Hamas's promise to better the lives of the Palestinian people was the main reason it won. But the United States and Israel say Palestinian life will only get harder if Hamas does not meet those three demands. They say Hamas plans to build up its militias and increase violence and must be starved out of power.

The officials drafting the plan know that Hamas leaders have repeatedly rejected demands to change and do not expect Hamas to meet them. "The point is to put this choice on Hamas's shoulders," a senior Western diplomat said. "If they make the wrong choice, all the options lead in a bad direction."

The strategy has many risks, especially given that Hamas will try to secure needed support from the larger Islamic world, including its allies Syria and Iran, as well as from private donors.

It will blame Israel and the United States for its troubles, appeal to the world not to punish the Palestinian people for their free democratic choice, point to the real hardship that a lack of cash will produce and may very well resort to an open military confrontation with Israel, in a sense beginning a third intifada.

The officials said the destabilization plan centers largely on money. The Palestinian Authority has a monthly cash deficit of some $60 million to $70 million after it receives between $50 million and $55 million a month from Israel in taxes and customs duties collected by Israeli officials at the borders but owed to the Palestinians.

Israel says it will cut off those payments once Hamas takes power, and put the money in escrow. On top of that, some of the aid that the Palestinians currently receive will be stopped or reduced by the United States and European Union governments, which will be constrained by law or politics from providing money to an authority run by Hamas. The group is listed by Washington and the European Union as a terrorist organization.

Israel has other levers on the Palestinian Authority: controlling entrance and exit from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for people and goods, the number of workers who are allowed into Israel every day, and even the currency used in the Palestinian territories, which is the Israeli shekel.

Israeli military officials have discussed cutting Gaza off completely from the West Bank and making the Israeli-Gaza border an international one. They also say they will not allow Hamas members of the Palestinian parliament, some of whom are wanted by Israeli security forces, to travel freely between Gaza and the West Bank.

On Sunday, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced after a cabinet meeting that Israel would consider Hamas to be in power on the day the new parliament is sworn in: this Saturday.

So beginning next month, the Palestinian Authority will face a cash deficit of at least $110 million a month, or more than $1 billion a year, which it needs to pay full salaries to its 140,000 employees, who are the breadwinners for at least one-third of the Palestinian population.

The employment figure includes some 58,000 members of the security forces, most of which are affiliated with the defeated Fatah movement.

If a Hamas government is unable to pay workers, import goods, transfer money and receive significant amounts of outside aid, Mr. Abbas, the president, would have the authority to dissolve parliament and call new elections, the officials say, even though that power is not explicit in the Palestinian basic law.

The potential for an economic crisis is real. The Palestinian stock market has already fallen about 20 percent since the election on Jan. 25, and the Authority has exhausted its borrowing capacity with local banks.

Hamas gets up to $100,000 a month in cash from abroad, Israel and Western officials say. "But it's hard to move millions of dollars in suitcases," a Western official said.

The United States and the European Union in particular want any failure of Hamas in leadership to be judged as Hamas's failure, not one caused by Israel and the West.

The officials say much now depends on Mr. Abbas, the Fatah-affiliated president who called for the January elections, has four more years in office and is insistent that Hamas has a democratic right to govern.

But Mr. Abbas has also threatened to quit if he does not have a government that can carry out his fundamental policies — which include, he has said, negotiations with Israel toward a final peace treaty based on a permanent two-state solution. The United States and the European Union have strongly urged him to stay on the job and shoulder his responsibilities, the officials say.

Western diplomats say they expect Mr. Abbas to repeat those positions in his speech on Saturday when the new parliament is sworn in, laying the groundwork for a future confrontation with Hamas.

In preparation for a Hamas-led government, Mr. Abbas is also said to be insisting on reinforcing his position as commander in chief of all Palestinian forces, even though the prime minister and the interior minister also have control over them through a security council that the prime minister chairs.

On Monday the departing parliament made an effort to boost Mr. Abbas's powers by passing legislation giving him the authority to appoint a new constitutional court that can veto legislation deemed in violation of the Palestinians' basic law.

Mr. Abbas would appoint the nine judges to the new court without seeking parliamentary approval. Hamas immediately objected. "The parliament has no mandate and no authority to issue any new legislation," said a Hamas spokesman, Said Siyam, adding that Hamas would try to overturn the decisions once the new legislature convened on Saturday.

Hamas will control at least 74 seats of the 132-member parliament, and it is likely to have the support of six more members on key votes. But more than 10 percent of the new legislators are already in Israeli jails: 10 from Hamas, 3 from Fatah and one from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The United States and Fatah believe that the Hamas victory was far less sweeping than the seat total makes it appear, said Khalil Shikaki, a pollster and the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

In an interview in Ramallah, Mr. Shikaki said that if Fatah had forced members to withdraw their independent candidacies in constituencies where they split the votes with official Fatah candidates, it might have won the election. Half of the 132 seats were decided by a vote for a party list, and the other half by a separate vote for a local candidate.

Hamas won 44 percent of the popular vote but 56 percent of the seats, while Fatah won 42 percent of the popular vote but only 34 percent of the seats. The reason? "Fatah ran a lousy campaign," Mr. Shikaki said, and Mr. Abbas "did not force enough Fatah independents to pull out."

If only 76 "independent" Fatah candidates had not run, Mr. Shikaki said, Fatah would have won 33 seats and Hamas 33. In the districts, Hamas won an average of only 39 percent of the vote while winning 68 percent of the seats, Mr. Shikaki said.

"Fatah now is obsessed with undoing this election as soon as possible," he said. "Israel and Washington want to do it over too. The Palestinian Authority could collapse in six months."

New Hamas legislators were unimpressed. Farhat Asaad, a Hamas spokesman, and Nasser Abdaljawad, who won a seat in Salfit where two Fatah candidates split the vote, gave the United States "a year or two" to come around to the idea of dealing openly with Hamas.

Mr. Asaad, a former Israeli prisoner, said: "We hope it isn't U.S. policy. Because those who try to isolate us will be isolated in the region."

Hamas will move on two parallel fronts, he said: the first, to reform Palestinian political life, and the second, "to break the isolation of our government." If Hamas succeeds on both fronts, he said, "we will achieve a great thing for our people, a normal life with security and a state of law, where no one can abuse power."

Hamas will find the money it needs from the Muslim world, said Mr. Abdaljawad, who spent 12 years in jail and got a Ph.D. while there. Hamas will save money by ending corruption and providing efficiency. Hamas will break the Palestinian dependency on Israel, he said.

Mr. Asaad laughed and added: "First, I thank the United States that they have given us this weapon of democracy. But there is no way to retreat now. It's not possible for the U.S. and the world to turn its back on an elected democracy."

Edna Bekenstein, the president of the Tel Aviv district court, said Omri could delay the start of his sentence until August 31, giving him the chance to spend time with his seriously ill father.

His lawyers immediately announced their intention to appeal. Omri accused the court of hanging him out to dry merely because he was so high profile.

"It's a severe punishment. Had it not been Omri Sharon it would not have been the same severity," he told reporters outside the court.

Omri pleaded guilty to providing false testimony, falsifying documents and violating the electoral campaigns law last year after a probe into the financing of his father's 1999 campaign for the leadership of the Likud party.

Delivering the sentence, Bekenstein said Sharon tirelessly spun a web of deceit in order to raise unlimited funds for his father's campaign, and insisted that his sentence would serve as a warning and lesson to others.

"He knowingly made his father sign false statements he actively endangered the democratic process.

"This sentence has a very important impact in draining the political swamp. His crimes had an impact on the entire nation which enhances their severity."

The sentence was welcomed by state prosecutor Erez Nurieli who pressed for jail time for the former MP, who was forced to resign his seat in parliament for the right-wing Likud faction.

"This is a happy day. The sentencing befits the severity of the crime. The public and its elected representatives must now make a reckoning. The court accepted our case that this severely damaged democracy," he said.

The defence slammed the verdict and had argued community service would have been sufficient punishment for the contrite defendant, who has been taken into the bosom of the nation since his father suffered a massive stroke last month.

The court case follows a police investigation into allegations of illegal financing of Ariel Sharon's successful 1999 campaign for the leadership of the Likud which has also entangled the prime minister himself.

In early January, a day before Sharon collapsed, police said they had gathered evidence during a raid on one of his associate's houses which they believed would prove his family received a bribe of three million dollars.

Sources close to the premier claimed that the fierce attacks by political opponents following the police claims had contributed to his collapse.

The police inquiry has since been stalled by the prime minister's health crisis, with doubts he will ever regain consciousness.

Omri, who was a key backroom ally of his father, has spent much of the time since his father suffered a brain haemorrhage on January 4 at his bedside at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital.

Israeli politics has been rocked by a string of corruption scandals.

Another Likud MP, Naomi Blumenthal, was found guilty on Monday of electoral bribery after paying luxury hotel bills for 15 Likud central committee members in return for their vote to secure her a high place on the party's list of parliamentary candidates in the last election.

Israeli Attorney General Menahem Mazuz decided earlier this month to indict Tzahi Hanegi, a cabinet minister who is managing Kadima's campaign for a March 28 general election, for cronyism during his time as environment minister.

First of all, Hamas has not yet formed a Palestinian government. And even when it does, there’s nothing to suggest that it would not be willing to negotiate with Israel—indeed, it has repeatedly signaled its intention to do just that. Anyway, governments enter into agreements with each other as governments, not as political parties—so the agreements already signed by the Palestinian Authority in that sense would be more binding on any future Hamas government than Hamas’s own charter, about which we have heard so much in recent weeks. Moreover, Hamas members ran for elections not on the basis of the party’s charter, but rather on the basis of a platform that included neither a call for the destruction of Israel, nor a call for the establishment of a Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine.

Second, Olmert’s announcement does not differ substantively from various pronouncements made by Ariel Sharon in recent years, long before Hamas's electoral victory, including a December 2004 speech in which Sharon claimed that the agreements he’d reached with the US “protect Israel’s most essential interests: first and foremost, not demanding a return to the ‘67 borders; allowing Israel to permanently keep large settlement blocs which have high Israeli populations; and the total refusal of allowing Palestinian refugees to return to Israel.”

In fact, assuming that nothing happens to make Israel change its mind, the future status of the West Bank will be determined according to a formula that pre-existed the Hamas electoral victory by a number of years, even decades.

The outlines of that formula were already being written in concrete and steel in the form of the barrier that Israel has been constructing since 2003. For almost its entire length, the barrier runs not along the 1967 border, but rather deep into the West Bank, depending on Israel’s territorial ambitions.

The parts of the West Bank that have relatively dense Palestinian populations have already been broken into two or three major chunks. Each of these, itself internally further fragmented according to Israeli fiat, will continue to be divided from the others by a network of Israeli army checkpoints, settlements and bypass roads. Jerusalem will continue to be off limits to most Palestinians, including many born there. The ninety percent of east Jerusalem that actually consists of territory illegally annexed by Israel after 1967 will remain off limits to the Palestinians whose land was thus taken from them, who now live not merely on the other side of an imaginary line, but rather on the other side of what is in many areas a 24 foot high concrete wall. Borders, airspace and water will remain firmly under Israeli control.

The real point, however, is not that this formula was devised by Ariel Sharon and repackaged by Ehud Olmert.

For, in substance if not in precise detail (though often in detail too), this is the formula that was on offer at Oslo in 1995 and at Camp David in 2000. Not just that: as the merest glance at a map will show, it is essentially the same unilateral and self-serving formula that Israel first devised when it originally conquered the West Bank, namely, the Allon Plan of 1967.

Over the years, Israel has packaged and repackaged this basic formula. When it had, beginning with Oslo, a Palestinian leadership willing to sign off on its terms, it was happy to negotiate various technicalities—while carrying on expropriating land and building new roads and settlements in the very territories supposedly under negotiation. Whenever Palestinians have balked at granting certain concessions, such as renouncing the rights of refugees driven from their homes in 1948, Israel has called off negotiations and complained vociferously about not having a “partner for peace.”

So what’s happening now is nothing new: Palestinians are being told that they can either accept Israel’s terms and call the shattered fragments of territory they are left with “a state with attributes of sovereignty.” Or they can learn to live with them anyway.

For the vast majority of Palestinians, neither option is acceptable.

But Tuesday morning's search of the Beit Amir school bus resulted in a boy being shot in the face. Soldiers claim that the boy opened a window, and when they ordered him to close it, he did not. So he was shot in the face by the soldiers at close range.


Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian student in the face after searching a school bus Tuesday morning.

The bus was traveling from Al Arroub Refugee Camp north of Hebron to Beit Amir High School.

According to eyewitnesses, Israeli forces at a checkpoint at the entrance of the Camp stopped the school bus and forced students to get off. The soldiers claimed that students had rocks and Molotov Cocktails.

Eyewitnesses said that after a brief search of the vehicles, soldiers allowed students to board the bus and ordered them to close the windows of the vehicle. As the students were doing so, a soldier shot 17 year old Ala' Muhammad Ahmed Al Jabiry in the face.

An Israeli ambulance rushed to the scene and transported the youth to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

Israeli soldiers claim the Jabiry did not follow orders and opened the window rather than closing it.

Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened to cut all contacts with the Palestinian Authority if parliament is headed by Hamas leaders.

"If the Palestinians choose a parliament speaker and prime minister who are affiliated with Hamas, Israel will immediately sever all contact with the Palestinian Authority," Mofaz told Wednesday's edition of the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily.

The hawkish Mofaz has taken an even harder line than Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has said he wants to work with moderate Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, who is not a member of Hamas.

"We refuse to have any contacts with any decision-making body that is headed by Hamas," a top-ranking Israeli official from the prime minister's office told AFP.

"This means there will be no transfer of funds (to the Palestinian Authority) and no travel permission for such officials," the source said on condition of anonymity.

Hamas, which has been behind dozens of suicide attacks against Israel, is widely expected to choose two of its own senior members as both premier and speaker at inauguration ceremonies on Saturday.

Olmert, who is standing in for coma-stricken Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, also stressed in a speech Tuesday that Israel would have no truck with Hamas unless it committed itself to non-violence and recognised Israel's right to exist.

"Israel will not, under any circumstances, negotiate with a terror organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel," Olmert told an American-Jewish conference in Jerusalem.

Mofaz added that he did not expect any such change of heart and Israel had to therefore show no compromise.

"From my standpoint, it does not look like Hamas intends to give up its ideology regarding Israel's destruction, and it does not intend to recognise" Israel, added Mofaz.

However, Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal has set forth conditions of his own, saying that Middle East peace could be achieved if Israel ended its aggression and occupation of the Palestinian territories.

"I want to tell the United States, the international community and all those who speak about peace that... the shortest way for this is that they should work for halting the Israeli aggression and occupation of the Palestinian territories," Meshaal said Tuesday during a visit to Khartoum.

"Otherwise, resistance and steadfastness will continue to be the only option before the movement (Hamas)," he warned during the trip, part of a tour of Muslim countries aimed at mustering support for his movement.

The major players in the peace process, including the United States and European Union, have threatened to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority in the absence of any such commitment from Hamas.

Meshaal, once the target of an assassination bid by Israel, described as "unjustified" the position assumed by the West towards Hamas's victory.

"What have the Palestinian people done other than put up resistance for the sake of their cause while the world stood silent before the Israeli usurpation of the Palestinian territories?" he asked.

Top Israeli and Palestinian leaders have not met for many months, but meetings at a lower level have continued to take place regularly.

Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said in Sudan his group had no plans to recognize Israel.

"There will be no recognition of Israel and there will be no security for the occupation and colonization forces," Mashaal told a rally in Khartoum. "Resistance will remain our strategic option."

The New York Times, citing U.S. and Israeli officials it did not identify, reported Tuesday that the United States and Israel were considering a campaign to starve the Palestinian Authority of cash so Palestinians would grow disillusioned and bring down a Hamas government.

Israeli security officials said they were looking at ways to force Hamas from power and were focusing on an economic squeeze that would prompt Palestinians to clamor for the return of President Mahmoud Abbas' ousted Fatah Party. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

A Foreign Ministry official said Israel was threatening to dry up funding and isolate the Palestinians internationally in an effort to keep Hamas, which is committed to Israel's destruction, from taking power.

However, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon told The Associated Press: "There are no ongoing discussions with the U.S. designed to bring down the Palestinian government."

"There is no conspiracy between Israel and the United States to hurt the Palestinian people and there is no plan whatsoever to compromise the well-being of the Palestinian people," he said.

A Hamas official protested the reports, saying attempts to bring down a future Hamas government were hypocritical.

"This is ... a rejection of the democratic process, which the Americans are calling for day and night," incoming legislator Mushir al Masri said. "It's an interference and a collective punishment of our people because they practiced the democratic process in a transparent and honest way."

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "There's no plot." State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he was "puzzled" by the report.

"We are not having conversations with the Israelis that we are not having with others, including the Quartet. There is no plan, there is no plot," he said.

He also reiterated the demands of the so-called Quartet of Mideast peace negotiators: that Hamas recognize Israel, renounce terror and accept past agreements reached by the Palestinians. The Quartet — which includes the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia — backs the "road map" peace plan envisioning a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel.

Hamas trounced Abbas' Fatah Party in legislative elections last month and is poised to form a new government in the coming weeks. Hamas swept to power on the strength of public dissatisfaction with Fatah's failure to eradicate lawlessness and corruption.

Abbas, elected separately last year, will remain in office and has been taking steps in recent days to curb the power of the incoming Hamas legislature.

Mashaal, on a regional tour to generate support for Hamas, said the group still hopes to form a national coalition government with other Palestinian factions, including Fatah.

"By God, Israel will not feel safe and will have no legitimacy," Mashaal said to shouts of "Allahu Akbar!" or "God is great!" while standing before a huge portrait of slain Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

"The world should commit Israel to withdraw from our territories and stop occupation and aggression and allow the Palestinian people to establish their independent state, with Jerusalem its capital."

Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Tuesday ruled out talks with the militant group.

"We will not negotiate and we will not deal with a Palestinian Authority that will be dominated wholly or partly by a terrorist organization," he said in comments to visiting Jewish American leaders.

Israel has said it will not deal with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognizes Israel's right to exist and accepts current agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.

He also called on Abbas to disarm Hamas.

The reports about U.S. and Israeli interest in undoing the results of Jan. 25 Palestinian elections came a day after the outgoing Fatah parliament empowered Abbas to set up a sympathetic court that would be able to veto Hamas legislation unchallenged.

Abbas also took back control of state-run Palestine TV and radio, denying Hamas yet another tool of power.

The idea of withholding aid is not new. Since Hamas' electoral victory, the West has been threatening to cut nearly $1 billion in annual aid to the Palestinians, though Russia's recent invitation to Hamas to visit Moscow, and France's support for the Russian approach, have cracked what was a united front.

Israel also has threatened to cut off monthly transfers to the Palestinians of about $50 million from taxes and customs it collects for them, once Hamas takes power. The new Palestinian parliament is to convene for its first session Saturday, and a new Cabinet is expected to be appointed within weeks.

What is new is the twist of forcing regime change by impoverishing the Palestinians even further.

Even with the Israeli tax transfers and Western aid, the Palestinian Authority is expected to run a $660 million budget deficit in 2006. Without the tax and aid, the Hamas government could be forced to impose widespread layoffs affecting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Israel has other leverage on the Palestinian Authority, including its control of the movement of people and goods between the noncontiguous West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that "speaking of ousting Hamas could backfire."

For one thing, Palestinians could blame the United States and Israel — not Hamas — for their growing misery if funding is cut. Moreover, Hamas certainly would turn to the Muslim world and private donors to try to make up at least some of the Western shortfall.

Cheshin reproached the petitioners for asking the state to define the security risks entailed in the granting of citizenship. In cases where the granting of Israeli citizenship to a Palestinian spouse would indeed pose a risk to state security, the petitioners asked that such individuals instead be granted entry visas.

"We need to listen to the declarations made by Hamas on a daily basis. The Palestinian people chose Hamas," Cheshin said.

"It's true that the Palestinians are not a hostile people. But are the State of Israel's defensive efforts against terror attacks, against lone individuals carrying out attacks not a sufficient enough reason to prevent their entry? Why should we take chances during wartime? Did England and America take chances with Germans seeking their destruction during the Second World War? No one is preventing them from building a family but they should live in Jenin instead of in [the Israeli Arab city of] Umm al-Fahm. The romance is touching but we are talking about life and death and the right to life takes priority," Cheshin said.

Supreme Court President Aharon Barak raised the possibility of alternate options that would infringe less on human rights.

It is possible, according to Barak, that Palestinians who marry Israelis could remain in Israel but would be granted identity cards visually different from those issued to Israeli citizens. This difference would allow their identification even after their entry into Israel is approved.

The petitioners claim the amendment, which denies citizenship to Palestinians but would grant it to other foreign nationals who marry Israelis, is inherently discriminatory and racist.

"Personal freedom touches on the most basic of human rights: The right to love, to love and be loved by one's partner, to aspire to establish a home and a joint life without any institutional obstacles," the petition said.

Shlomo Ben-Ami is both an insider and a scholar. As Foreign Minister under Ehud Barak, he was a key participant in years of Israel-Palestinian peace talks, including the Camp David and Taba talks in 2000 and 2001. An Oxford-trained historian, his new book is "Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli Arab Tragedy." President Bill Clinton says, "Shlomo Ben-Ami worked tirelessly and courageously for peace. His account of what he did and failed to do and where we go from here should be read by everyone who wants a just and lasting resolution."

Norman Finkelstein is a Professor of Political Science at DePaul University. His latest book is "Beyond Chutzpah: On The Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History." Leading Israeli scholar Avi Shlaim of Oxford University calls Beyond Chutzpah "brilliantly illuminating... On display are all the sterling qualities for which Finkelstein has become famous."

We tried to cover as much ground as we could, from the origins of the conflict, to the Oslo peace process, to the present.

AMY GOODMAN: What happens when a former Israeli Foreign Minister debates a scholar known as one of the world's foremost critics of Israeli policy? The answer is not what you may expect. Last week, Shlomo Ben-Ami and Norman Finkelstein joined us our Firehouse studio for a wide-ranging exchange that lasted close to two hours. Today, we bring you an edited version of what they had to say.

Shlomo Ben-Ami is both an insider and a scholar. As Foreign Minister under Ehud Barak, he was a key participant in years of Israel-Palestinian peace talks, including the Camp David and Taba talks in 2000 and 2001. An Oxford-trained historian, his new book is Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. President Bill Clinton says, quote, “Shlomo Ben-Ami worked tirelessly and courageously for peace. His account of what he did and failed to do and where we go from here should be read by everyone who wants a just and lasting resolution.”

We’re also joined by Norman Finkelstein. He is a professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago. His latest book is Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. Avi Shlaim, Israeli scholar at Oxford University calls Beyond Chutzpah “Brilliantly illuminating… On display are all the sterling qualities for which Finkelstein has become famous.”

We tried to cover as much ground as we could from the origins of the conflict to the Oslo peace process to the present. I began by asking the former Foreign Minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami, about the founding of Israel in 1948.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: In 1948, what was born was a state, but also original superpower in many ways. We have prevailed over the invading Arab armies and the local population, which was practically evicted from Palestine, from the state of Israel, from what became the state of Israel, and this is how the refugee problem was born. Interestingly, the Arabs in 1948 lost a war that was, as far as they were concerned, lost already in 1936-1939, because they have fought against the British mandate and the Israeli or the Jewish Yishuv, the Jewish pre-state, and they were defeated then, so they came to the hour of trial in 1948 already as a defeated nation. That is, the War of 1948 was won already in 1936, and they had no chance to win the war in 1948. They were already a defeated nation when they faced the Israeli superpower that was emerging in that year.

AMY GOODMAN: You have some very strong quotes in your book, of your own and quoting others, like Berl Katznelson, who is the main ideologue of the Labor movement, acknowledging that in the wake of the 1929 Arab riots, the Zionist enterprise as an enterprise of conquest. You also say, “The reality on the ground was that of an Arab community in a state of terror facing a ruthless Israeli army whose path to victory was paved not only by its exploits against the regular Arab armies, but also by the intimidation and at times atrocities and massacres it perpetrated against the civilian Arab community. A panic-stricken Arab community was uprooted under the impact of massacres that would be carved into the Arabs' monument of grief and hatred.” Explain that further.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, you see, there is a whole range of new historians that have gone into the sources of -- the origins of the state of Israel, among them you mentioned Avi Shlaim, but there are many, many others that have exposed this evidence of what really went on on the ground. And I must from the very beginning say that the main difference between what they say and my vision of things is not the facts. The facts, they are absolutely correct in mentioning the facts and putting the record straight.

My view is that, but for Jesus Christ, everybody was born in sin, including nations. And the moral perspective of it is there, but at the same time it does not undermine, in my view, in my very modest view, the justification for the creation of a Jewish state, however tough the conditions and however immoral the consequences were for the Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: I did want you to step back, Shlomo Ben-Ami, and give us an overview of the whole peace process, of which you were a part, a critical player in this, the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993. Can you talk about what they entailed, why they failed?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, the Oslo peace process was an agreement -- it started as an agreement between two unequal partners. Arafat conceived Oslo as a way, not necessarily to reach a settlement, but more importantly to him at that particular moment, in order to come back to the territories and control the politics of the Palestinian family. Don't forget that the Intifada, to which Oslo brought an end, started independently of the P.L.O. leadership, and he saw how he was losing control of the destiny of the Palestinians. His only way to get back to the territories was through an agreement with Israel. So in Oslo, he made enormous concessions.

In fact, when he was negotiating in Oslo with us, an official Palestinian delegation was negotiating with an official Israeli delegation in Washington, and the official Palestinian delegation was asking the right things from the viewpoint of the Palestinians -- self-determination, right of return, end of occupation, all the necessary arguments -- whereas Arafat in Oslo reached an agreement that didn't even mention the right of self-determination for the Palestinians, doesn't even mention the need of the Israelis to put an end to settlements. If the Israelis, after Oslo, continued expansion of settlements, they were violating the spirit of Oslo, not the letter of Oslo. There is nothing in the Oslo agreement that says that Israelis cannot build settlements. So this was the cheap agreement that Arafat sold, precisely because he wanted to come back to the territories and control the politics of Palestine.

Now, the thing is that a major problem with Oslo, on top of it, was that it solved very minor issues, such as Gaza, and even people on the far Israeli right were ready to give away Gaza, but it left open the future. The future was unknown. The two sides, the two parties started to embark on a process, when they had diametrically opposed views as to the final objective. There was nothing as to what will happen about Jerusalem. It was only said that we will negotiate Jerusalem. What about refugees? Nothing clear was said, just that we will negotiate the refugees. So the thing that -- the fact that the future was left so wide open was a standing invitation for the parties to dictate -- to try and dictate -- the nature of the final agreement through unilateral acts: the Israelis, by expanding settlements, and the Palestinians, by responding with terrorism. So this symmetry that was created in Oslo persists to this very day, so Oslo could not usher in a final agreement because of the different expectations that the parties had. It was an exercise in make-believe.

The Palestinians didn't even mention self-determination so a leader like Rabin could have thought that, okay, we will have an agreement that will create something which is a state-minus. This was Rabin’s expression. He never thought this will end in a full-fledged Palestinian state. There was a lot of ambiguity, constructive ambiguity might Kissinger say, but I think it was destructive ambiguity. It helped -- this destructive ambiguity helped in clinching the Oslo Agreement, but it was a minefield for those who went to Camp David and later on to Taba to try and solve all the pending issues.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Norman Finkelstein.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I’m going to try to focus on the key points or issues about the refugees in Jerusalem, which for now I can't get into, but I will be happy to return to them later when we discuss what was the impasse at Oslo -- excuse me, the impasse at Camp David and Taba, but I want to set the context, and I don’t think -- I agree in part with the context that Dr. Ben-Ami set out, but not fully.

The main context, in my opinion, is as follows. Since the mid-1970s, there's been an international consensus for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. Most of your listeners will be familiar with it. It's called a two-state settlement, and a two-state settlement is pretty straightforward, uncomplicated. Israel has to fully withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem, in accordance with the fundamental principle of international law, cited three times by Mr. Ben-Ami in the book, his book, that it's inadmissible to acquire territory by war. The West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, having been acquired by war, it's inadmissible for Israel to keep them. They have to be returned. On the Palestinian side and also the side of the neighboring Arab states, they have to recognize Israel's right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. That was the quid pro quo: recognition of Israel, Palestinian right to self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in Jerusalem. That's the international consensus.

It's not complicated. It's also not controversial. You see it voted on every year in the United Nations. The votes typically something like 160 nations on one side, the United States, Israel and Naru, Palau, Tuvalu, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands on the other side. That's it. Now, the Israeli government was fully aware that this was the international consensus, but they were opposed (a) to a full withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem, of course, and (2) they were opposed to creating a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories.

Come 1981, as pressure builds on Israel to reach a diplomatic settlement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, they decide to invade Lebanon in order to crush the P.L.O., because the P.L.O. was on record supporting a two-state settlement. As Dr. Ben-Ami's colleague, Avner Yaniv, put it in a very excellent book, Dilemmas of Security, he said, “The main problem for Israel was,” and now I’m quoting him, "the P.L.O.'s peace offensive. They wanted a two-state settlement. Israel did not.” And so Israel decides to crush the P.L.O. in Lebanon. It successfully did so. The P.L.O. goes into exile.

Come 1987, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories despair of any possibility of international intervention, and they enter into a revolt -- the Palestinian Intifada -- basically nonviolent civilian revolt by the Palestinians. And the revolt proves to be remarkably successful for maybe the first couple of years. Come 1990, Iraq invades Kuwait. The P.L.O. supports, ambiguously, but I think we fairly can say, and I agree with Dr. Ben-Ami on this, they lend support to Iraq. The war ends, Iraq defeated, and all the Gulf states cut off all of their money to the P.L.O. The P.L.O. Is going down the tubes.

Along comes Israel with a clever idea. Mr. Rabin says, ‘Let's throw Arafat a life preserver, but on condition.’ And Dr. Ben-Ami puts it excellently, that “the P.L.O. will be Israel's subcontractor and collaborator in the Occupied Territories,” and I’m quoting Dr. Ben-Ami, "in order to suppress the genuinely democratic tendencies of the Palestinians." Now, it's true, exactly as Dr. Ben-Ami said, that Israel had two options after the Iraq war. It could have negotiated with the real representatives of the Palestinians who wanted that full two-state settlement in accordance with the international consensus, or it can negotiate with Arafat in the hope that he's so desperate that he's going to serve as their collaborator and subcontractor in order to deny the Palestinians what they're entitled to under international law. The Israelis chose Arafat, not only because Arafat himself was desperate. They chose him because they thought he would deny them what they were entitled to. He would suppress all resistance to the occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Norman Finkelstein, author of Beyond Chutzpah. More from his debate with former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami after the break.

AMY GOODMAN: We continue today with the debate between Professor Norman Finkelstein and former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami. Since the outbreak of the latest Palestinian Intifada in the fall of 2000, the subject of what happened during the final round of peace talks at Camp David in July 2000 and at Taba in January 2001 has been the subject of much debate. The Israeli government and its supporters have blamed the Palestinians for rejecting what they say was a generous offer that would have given them a viable state. The Palestinians say Israel never made an offer that even approaches meeting their minimal rights. Each side has used the other's alleged position to assign blame for the violence that’s plunged the conflict into deeper chaos. We begin this part of the debate with Professor Norman Finkelstein, talking about the peace talks at Camp David in July 2000.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: My concern is let's look at the diplomatic record, the factual record. What were the offers being made on each side of the Camp David and in the Taba talks? And the standard interpretation, which comes -- which is -- you can call it the Dennis Ross interpretation, which, I think, unfortunately Dr. Ben-Ami echoes, is that Israel made huge concessions at Camp David and Taba; Palestinians refused to make any concessions, because of what Dr. Ben-Ami repeatedly calls Arafat's unyielding positions; and that Arafat missed a huge opportunity. Now, it is correct to say that if you frame everything in terms of what Israel wanted, it made huge concessions. However, if you frame things in terms of what Israel was legally entitled to under international law, then Israel made precisely and exactly zero concessions. All the concessions were made by the Palestinians.

Briefly, because we don't have time, there were four key issues at Camp David and at Taba. Number one, settlements. Number two, borders. Number three, Jerusalem. Number four, refugees. Let's start with settlements. Under international law, there is no dispute, no controversy. Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it's illegal for any occupying country to transfer its population to Occupied Territories. All of the settlements, all of the settlements are illegal under international law. No dispute. The World Court in July 2004 ruled that all the settlements are illegal. The Palestinians were willing to concede 50% -- 50% of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was a monumental concession, going well beyond anything that was demanded of them under international law.

Borders. The principle is clear. I don't want to get into it now, because I was very glad to see that Dr. Ben-Ami quoted it three times in his book. It is inadmissible to acquire territory by war. Under international law, Israel had to withdraw from all of the West Bank and all of Gaza. As the World Court put it in July 2004, those are, quote, "occupied Palestinian territories." Now, however you want to argue over percentages, there is no question, and I know Dr. Ben-Ami won't dispute it, the Palestinians were willing to make concessions on the borders. What percentage? There’s differences. But there is no question they were willing to make concessions.

Jerusalem. Jerusalem is an interesting case, because if you read Dr. Ben-Ami or the standard mainstream accounts in the United States, everyone talks about the huge concessions that Barak was willing to make on Jerusalem. But under international law Israel has not one atom of sovereignty over any of Jerusalem. Read the World Court decision. The World Court decision said Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory. Now, the Palestinians were willing, the exact lines I’m not going to get into now – they are complicated, but I’m sure Dr. Ben-Ami will not dispute they were willing to divide Jerusalem roughly in half, the Jewish side to Israel, the Arab side to the Palestinians.

And number four, refugees. On the question of refugees, it's not a dispute under international law. Remarkably, even fairly conservative human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, in 2000, during the Camp David talks, they issued statements on the question of the right of return. And they stated categorically, under international law every Palestinian, roughly five to six million, has the right to return, not to some little parcels, 1% of Israel, which Israel is about -- which Israel would swap, return to their homes or the environs of their homes in Israel. That's the law. Now, Dr. Ben-Ami will surely agree that the Palestinians were not demanding and never demanded the full return of six million refugees. He gives a figure of 4-800,000. In fact – I’m not going to get into the numbers, because it’s very hard to pin it down -- other authors have given figures of the tens of thousands to 200,000 refugees returning. That's well short of six million.

On every single issue, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. The problem is, everyone, including Dr. Ben-Ami in his book -- he begins with what Israel wants and how much of its wants it's willing to give up. But that's not the relevant framework. The only relevant framework is under international law what you are entitled to, and when you use that framework it's a very, very different picture.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can bear to make this response brief, Dr. Shlomo Ben-Ami.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Yes, yes. Okay, the last third part of the book, as Dr. Finkelstein says, there is the diplomat, and this same diplomat still behaves in a way as a historian when he says in this book that Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well. This is something I put in the book. But Taba is the problem. The Clinton parameters are the problem, because the Clinton parameters, in my view --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Maybe you could explain to them what that is. I don't think most people will know the Clinton parameters.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, the Clinton parameters say the following. They say that on the territorial issue, the Palestinians will get 100% of Gaza, 97% of the West Bank, plus safe passage from Gaza to the West Bank to make the state viable. There will be a land swap. The 97%, which I mentioned, takes into account the land swap, where they will get 3% on this side, within the state of Israel, so we will have the blocks of settlements and they will be able to settle refugees on this side of the border.

About Jerusalem, it says what is Jewish is Israeli, and what is Palestinian is -- sorry, and what is Arab is Palestinian. It includes full-fledged sovereignty for the Palestinians on Temple Mount, on the Haram al-Sharif, no sovereignty, no Jewish sovereignty on the Haram al-Sharif, which was at the time and continues to be a major, major problem for Israelis and Jews, that these things mean to them a lot. And then, with the question of refugees, it says that the refugees will return to historic Palestine, to historical Palestine, and that Israel will maintain its sovereign right of admission. That is, it will have to absorb a number of refugees but with restrictions that need to be negotiated between the parties. But the bulk of the refugees will be allowed to return to the state of Palestine. This is the essence of the Clinton parameters.

What Dr. Finkelstein said here about international law, I want to make it clear, it is important, it is vital for a civilized community of nations to have an axis of principles based on international law, around which to run the affairs of our chaotic world. It is very important. It is vital, etc. But at the same time, when you go into political issues, and you need to settle differences, historical differences, differences that have to do with political rights, security concerns, historical memories, etc., it is almost impossible to do things on the basis of international law, but rather, on something that is as close as possible to the requirements of international law. The very fact that, as Dr. Finkelstein rightly says, the Palestinians were ready to make this or that concession is the reflection of them understanding that there is no viability, there is no possibility really to reach an agreement that says let us apply automatically and rigidly the requirements of international law.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, debating Norman Finkelstein in our Firehouse studio. We moved our discussion then to the last time Israelis and Palestinians met for peace negotiations in the Egyptian resort town of Taba in January 2001. This is Norman Finkelstein.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: What actually happened? What actually happened was exactly as what was announced by the White House spokesman on January 3rd, 2001, the official statement was both the Israelis and the Palestinians have accepted the Clinton parameters with some reservations. Both sides entered reservations on the Clinton parameters. Dr. Ben-Ami leaves out in the book both sides. He only mentions the reservations by the Palestinians.

Number two, I was surprised to notice one of the books Dr. Ben-Ami recommends is the book by Clayton Swisher called The Truth at Camp David. I looked in the book. On page 402 of Clayton Swisher's book, when he's discussing the issue of entering reservations to Clinton's parameters, he quotes none other than Shlomo Ben-Ami. You acknowledged -- you call them relatively minor, but you acknowledged that Barak entered -- you called it several pages of reservations. In fact, Barak sent a ten-page letter of reservations to the Clinton parameters. It was exactly symmetrical. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians agreed to the Clinton parameters with some reservations.

Wait, one last point. One last point. Dr. Ben-Ami left out another crucial point in his account. He doesn't tell us why Taba ended. It ended officially when Barak withdrew his negotiators. It wasn't the Palestinians who walked out of Taba. It ended with the Israelis walking out of Taba, a matter of historical record, not even controversial.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ben-Ami.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, well. You see, as somebody who was a part of those who prepared the Israeli document that was submitted to President Clinton, I can say that the bulk of the document was an expression of our – the comparison that we made between our initial positions and what was reflected in the Clinton parameters. It was not a series of reservations. It was basically a mention of the difference, the way that we have gone. This was an attempt to impress the President, more than an attempt to say that these are reservations, sine qua nons. There were no real reservations in our document, whereas in the Palestinian document, there were plenty of them, with the refugees, with the Haram al-Sharif, with what have you. I mean, it was full of reservations from beginning to end. Ours was not a document about reservations, it was a statement, basically, that said these were our positions, this is where we stand today. we have gone a very long way, we cannot go beyond that. This was essentially what we sent.

Now, with regard to Taba, you see, we were a government committing suicide, practically. Two weeks before general elections, the chief of staff, General Mofaz, who is now the Minister of Defense, comes and in a -- I say that in the book -- in something that is tantamount to a coup d’etat, comes and says publicly that we are putting at risk the future of the state of Israel by assuming the Clinton parameters, and we accept them, we assume them. And then I go to Cairo and I meet President Mubarak, and President Mubarak invites Arafat to see me in Cairo, and I say to Arafat, “We are going to fine tune this in a meeting in Taba, if you wish.” And then we go to Taba, and we negotiate in Taba. And in Taba, Prime Minister Barak instructs me to conduct secret negotiations with Abu Alla. Within the negotiations, we had the second track trying to reach an agreement, and he even agrees to all kind of things that he was not very open to before that.

Now, this was the end. We saw that we are not reaching an agreement, and we need to go back, even if for the electoral campaign. I mean, we were a week before the elections. I mean, we were practically nonexistent. Our legitimacy as a government to negotiate such central issues as Jerusalem, as Temple Mount, the temple, etc., was being questioned, not only by the right that was making political capital out of it, but by the left, people from our own government. “Shlomo Ben-Ami is ready to sell out the country for the sake of a Nobel Prize.” This is what Haim Ramon said, one of the labor ministers, so it was unsustainable. We could not go any longer.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami discussing the breakdown of the peace talks at Taba in January 2001. Israel and the Palestinians have not met for final status peace talks since.

AMY GOODMAN: We return to our debate between the former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, and Professor Norman Finkelstein. I asked Finkelstein to discuss a section in his new book called the "Not-So-New New Anti-Semitism."

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, actually, I think it's useful to connect it with the conversation we've just had. Namely, I think when honest and reasonable people enter into a discussion about this topic, you will have large areas of agreement, some area of disagreement, and frankly -- and I’m not saying it to flatter; I say it because I believe it; I don't flatter by nature -- I’m quite certain that if Palestinians -- if representatives of the Palestinians were to sit down with Shlomo Ben-Ami in a room, weren't subjected to the sorts of political pressures that Dr. Ben-Ami describes from Israel, I think a reasonable settlement could be reached, and I think he's reasonable, in my opinion. We can disagree on some issues, but he's reasonable.

The problem is when you get to the United States. In the United States among those people who call themselves supporters of Israel, we enter the area of unreason. We enter a twilight zone. American Jewish organizations, they’re not only not up to speed yet with Steven Spielberg, they're still in the Leon Uris exodus version of history: the “this land is mine, God gave this land to me," and anybody who dissents from this, you can call it, lunatic version of history is then immediately branded an anti-Semite, and whenever Israel comes under international pressure to settle the conflict diplomatically, or when it is subjected to a public relations debacle, such as it was with the Second Intifada, a campaign is launched claiming there is a new anti-Semitism afoot in the world.

There is no evidence of a new anti-Semitism. If you go through all the literature, as I have, the evidence is actually in Europe, which is Dr. Ben-Ami's half-home ground, Spain, but throughout Europe, the evidence is, if you look at like the Pew Charitable Trust surveys, anti-Semitism has actually declined since the last time they did the surveys. They did it in 1991 and 2002. They said the evidence is that it's declined. And the same thing in the United States. What's called the “new anti-Semitism” is anyone who criticizes any official Israeli policies. In fact, my guess is had people not known who wrote Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, that book would immediately be put on the A.D.L.'s list of verboten books, an example of anti-Semitism, because he says things like the Zionists wanted to transfer the Arabs out. That's anti-Semitism. It has nothing to do with the real world. It's a public relations extravaganza production to deflect attention from the facts, from the realities, and I think this afternoon in our exchange, there were some areas of disagreement for sure, but I think a lot of what Dr. Ben-Ami said would not go down well with most of American Jewry, and that’s when they'll soon be charging him with being an anti-Semite.

AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of language, terrorism -- Arafat called terrorist, Hamas called terrorist -- how will you describe the Israeli state when it attacks civilians in the Occupied Territories? Or how would you describe Ariel Sharon?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, let me tell you what is my description of terrorism. Terrorism, in my view, is an indiscriminate attack against civilian population. If I, personally, or my son, God forbid, is being attacked, being in uniform in Palestinian territories, by a Hamas call, I would not define this as terrorism. I will define as terrorism if they go into a kindergarten or a mall, explode themselves and cause injuries and death among civilian population. This to me is –

Now, the problem of the response of a state is much more difficult to define, because a state needs to go not against the civilian population. It needs to go against military targets, ticking bombs. This is what states can do and should do. The problem is that when you have a fight, not against armies, which is the case of Syria, Egypt, we never spoke about terrorism, state -- Israeli state terrorism against the Egyptians. We spoke about wars between two military sides. This is very difficult in the conditions prevailing in places like Gaza or the West Bank, where you have militias, you have arsenals of weapons, etc., and the army attacks them and there is collateral damage to civilian population. To me, this is very difficult to define as state terrorism. It is attacking military objectives or sort of military objectives, an army which is not a real army but can cause damage and you need to fight back and defend your population, and it is very, very unfortunate that civilians are hit. But if Israel targets intentionally civilians, this is a different matter. This can be defined as terrorism. I don't believe that we have done it. Normally, the practice is that things happened collaterally.

AMY GOODMAN: I would like to get your response, Professor Finkelstein, and also if you could include in that, you have a chapter in Beyond Chutzpah called "Israel's Abu Ghraib."

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, on the issue of terrorism, I agree with Dr. Ben-Ami's definition. It's the indiscriminate targeting of civilians to achieve political ends. That's a capsule definition, but I think for our purposes it suffices. What does the record show? Let’s limit ourselves to just the Second Intifada, from September 28 to the present. The period for that period, the record shows approximately 3,000 Palestinians have been killed, approximately 900 Israelis have been killed. On the Palestinian side and the Israeli side -- I’m now using the figures of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories -- on the Palestinian and the Israeli side roughly one-half to two-thirds of the total number were civilians or bystanders. And if you look at the findings of the human rights supports -- B’Tselem, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, and so forth -- they all say that Israel uses reckless indiscriminate fire against Palestinians, and B’Tselem says when you have so many civilian casualties, you have, you know, 600 Palestinian children who have been killed, which is the total number of Israeli civilians killed. 600 Palestinian children killed.

They said when you have so much, so many civilians killed -- I don't particularly like the phrase "collateral damage" -- when you have so many civilians killed, B’Tselem says it hardly makes a difference whether you are purposely targeting them or not, the state has responsibility. So, you could say Israel -- using numbers, now -- is responsible for three times as much terrorism in the Occupied Territories as Palestinians against Israel. That's the question of terrorism.

Let's turn to an ancillary issue: the issue of torture. Now, the estimates are, up to 1994-1995, that Israel tortured -- and I’m using the language of Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem -- Israel has tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian detainees. Israel was the only country in the world, the only one, which had legalized torture from 1987 to 1999. The record on torture, on house demolitions and on targeted --

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: 1999 is when we came to office.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, I wish that were -- I wish that were the saving grace, but the fact of the matter is, being faithful to historical record, the record of Labour has been much worse on human rights violations than the record of Likud. It's a fact that the only Israeli government during the period from 1967 to the present which temporarily suspended torture was Begin from 1979 to 1981. On the record of house demolitions, Mr. Rabin used to boast that he had demolished many more homes than any Likud government. Even on the record of settlements, as Dr. Ben-Ami well knows, the record of Rabin was worse in terms of settlement expansion than the record of Yitzhak Shamir, and a fact he leaves out in the book, the record of Barak on housing startups in the Occupied Territories --

AMY GOODMAN: Building more houses?

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Yeah -- was worse than the record of Netanyahu. It's a paradox for, I’m sure, American listeners, but the record on human rights, an abysmal record in general, an abysmal record in general, and in particular, the worst record is the record of Labour, not Likud.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Norman Finkelstein, author of Beyond Chutzpah. We move ahead to Shlomo Ben-Ami. In this last part of the debate, I asked the former Israeli Foreign Minister to discuss Israel's human rights record and the allegations it’s tortured tens of thousands of Palestinians.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: To tell you the truth, I don't know about the numbers, and we have seen different governments in -- the British have done it. What the British did in Palestine in the ‘30s, there is nothing new in what we did that the British didn't do before us, and the Americans now in Iraq and elsewhere -- what I find very, very uncomfortable is really this singling out Israel that lives in a very unique sort of situation in comparison with other countries, but --

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Norman Finkelstein makes the point, "Israel's Abu Ghraib," so that’s making reference to what America did in Iraq.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, okay. But if you -- if you would come from another planet and examine the resolutions of the U.N., the Security Council, you might reach the conclusion there is only one sinner in this planet, and it’s the state of Israel, and not anybody else.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But I am quoting your own human rights organizations. You know, B’Tselem is not the United Nations.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, that’s okay. I mean, I’m not – but it speaks in favor of Israel that we have human rights, we have B’Tselem, and we criticize ourselves.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Right.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: And we want to change things, but the solution –

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: I will agree with that, but then you have to say it doesn't speak too much in Israel's favor that it's the only country in the world that legalized torture. It was also the only country in the world that legalized hostage taking. It was also the only country in the –

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: It wasn’t legalized –

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, yes. As your chief justice called it, “keeping Lebanese as bargaining chips.” Israel was the only country in the world that's legalized house demolitions as a form of punishment. Those things have to also be included in the record.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Ben-Ami.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: In addition to -- I totally agree with you, it's to Israel's credit that it has a B’Tselem, an organization for which I have the highest regard and esteem. I agree with that.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Okay, but the thing is that the conditions where Israel has to operate, this is -- we do not have a Sweden and Denmark as neighbors, and we have neighbors that have taken hostages, and have taken hostages that forced us to exchange things that were not very popular. Rabin himself gave away 1,500 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers, and Sharon gave away 400 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for four bodies of Israeli soldiers. So we are living in that kind of place.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But that may tell you that's because they take so many people prisoner that they have a lot to give back. Right now, as we speak, there are 9,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israel.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: This is because we live in the conditions that we live. We are not, as I said – this is not Scandinavia.

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But, Dr. Ben-Ami, you know, as well as I do, international law does not apply to some countries and not to others and some continents and not to others. Either it applies to everybody, or it applies to nobody. So to use the excuse, "Well, in our neighborhood we don't have to recognize international law," is simply a repudiation of international law.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: No, I’m not saying – No, no, I’m not saying that we do not have to recognize international law. I say that the conditions --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, then, it applies --

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: No, no. I mean, there are conditions where you cannot apply these lofty principles, which are very important, but you cannot apply them. And the British -- and the British --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The British is an interesting example.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, it’s an interesting example. They didn’t --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: B’Tselem did a comparison --

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: They did it in Gibraltar --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The British – that’s right.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: They did it in the Falklands. They did – anywhere --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: B’Tselem did an interesting comparison. It compared the British policies of torture in Northern Ireland with Israeli policies of torture. In the 1970s, there were thousands of terrorist attacks by the I.R.A., and B’Tselem's comparison showed that the Israeli record is much worse than the British on the question of torture. That's the facts.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Yeah. You face now in this country a challenge of terrorism, so you go to PATRIOT Act and you go to --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: But you won't find me justifying torture.

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: These are the conditions that can be very dire, very difficult --

NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: No conditions justify torture.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask Dr. Ben-Ami, on the issue of the United States, as you look here, coming here for a few days, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, do you feel there are problems with the detention of the hundreds of men that are being held at Guantanamo without charge and what happened at Abu Ghraib?

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, I cannot condone that. I mean, I think that, obviously, it is a violation of international norms. There is no doubt about it. But I don't follow the internal American debate. I don't know if this society is scandalized by what happens and what is the degree of civil opposition, civic opposition, and if you have here organizations like not only B’Tselem, even Shalom Achshav, which is a centrist – it’s not a leftwing -- organization that exposes the seams of your own government, I don't know. Maybe yes.

I think we are a society in the middle of a very complicated conflict. As I do admit, in this conflict many atrocities were committed by both sides, however, but I do recognize our own shortcomings, blunders and things. And the only solution to this situation -- the only, the only solution -- is to try and reach a final settlement between us and the Palestinians. There is no other way. There is no other way: to split the land into two states, two capitals, trying to find the best way to end this conflict, because much of the instability of the Middle East has to do with our condition. You don't need to be a bin Laden or a Saddam Hussein, who tried to put on themselves the mantle of the vindicators of the Palestinian cause in order to say that the Palestinian issue is a platform of instability in the region that needs to be solved.

But even when it is solved, let us not fool ourselves. Many of the problems that the West is facing today with the Arab world will persist. The Palestinian issue has been used frequently by many Arab rulers as a pretext for not doing things that need to be done in their own societies. But for the sake of the Israelis, I am not -- I am not -- when I say that we need to make concessions, it is not because I am concerned with the future of the Palestinians or because I am concerned with international law. I want to say it very clearly, it is because I define myself as an ardent Zionist that thinks that the best for the Jews in Israel is that we abandon the territories and we dismantle settlements and we try to reach a reasonable settlement with our Palestinian partners. It's not because I am concerned with the Palestinians. I want to be very clear about it. My interpretation, my approach is not moralistic. It's strictly political.

AMY GOODMAN: That was former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. He is the head of the Toledo Peace Centre in Spain now. Also our guest for the hour, Professor Norman Finkelstein. He is the author of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, professor at DePaul University in Chicago. This has been an edited version of the debate they held in our Firehouse studio last week. For the full unedited debate, you can go to our website at DemocracyNow.org.

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