GAZA CITY - Israeli forces killed five Palestinians and wounded at least six yesterday during a raid on the Balata refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Three men belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, were killed in a battle with the soldiers in the afternoon, Palestinian sources said. Witnesses said Israeli troops broke into several houses and buildings in the Al-Dahia neighborhood, converting them into lookouts.

Earlier, medics at Rafidia Hospital in Nablus said that Ebrahim Al-Saiedi, 17, and Naiem Abu Saries, 24, died from injuries received in fierce clashes with the Israeli troops at the refugee camp in the morning.

Since the army sweep of Balata began Monday, eight Palestinians have been killed by army fire, including the five shot dead yesterday. More than 50 Palestinians have been injured by live rounds and rubber-coated steel pellets, Palestinian hospital officials said.

The Israeli troops also conducted a house-to-house search during which several Palestinians were arrested. Israeli sources said two soldiers were wounded in the clashes.

Meanwhile, a senior Israeli security source said that Israel planned to pave new roads in the West Bank exclusively for Palestinians while Jewish settler vehicles would keep to the existing network.

Palestinians condemned the idea as a form of apartheid and said the initiative appeared aimed at cementing the Jewish state's hold on occupied land that they want for a state.

The Israeli source, who asked not to be named because the government has yet to finalize the road plan, said there was no intention of formally limiting Palestinian movement.

"We want to ease access to various Palestinian communities," the source said. "There is no intention of bringing about a separation of Israeli and Palestinian traffic. Palestinians will continue to make use of the roads they use today."

The source said, however, that Israelis would be banned from the future Palestinians-only roads because "we do not want them to get into a situation where their lives would be at risk."

After the Sep. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing for war in Afghanistan needed Iran's help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organised resistance by the "Northern Alliance" and had provided arms and funding, at a time when the United States had been unwilling to do so.

"The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States," recalls Flynt Leverett, then senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council (NSC), in an interview with IPS.

In October 2001, as the United States was just beginning its military operations in Afghanistan, State Department and NSC officials began meeting secretly with Iranian diplomats in Paris and Geneva, under the sponsorship of Lakhdar Brahimi, head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Leverett says these discussions focused on "how to effectively unseat the Taliban and once the Taliban was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government".

It was thanks to the Northern Alliance Afghan troops, which were supported primarily by the Iranians, that the Taliban was driven out of Kabul in mid-November. Two weeks later, the Afghan opposition groups were convened in Bonn under United Nations auspices to agree on a successor regime.

At that meeting, the Northern Alliance was demanding 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government, which was blocking agreement by other opposition groups. According to U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan James Dobbins, Iran played a "decisive role" in persuading the Northern Alliance delegate to compromise. Dobbins also recalls how the Iranians insisted on including language in the Bonn agreement on the war on terrorism.

The bureaucracy recognised that there was an opportunity to work with Iran not only on stabilising Afghanistan but on al Qaeda as well. As reported by the Washington Post on Oct. 22, 2004, the State Department's policy planning staff had written a paper in late November 2001 suggesting that the United States should propose more formal arrangements for cooperation with Iran on fighting al Qaeda.

That would have involved exchanging intelligence information with Tehran as well as coordinating border sweeps to capture al Qaeda fighters and leaders who were already beginning to move across the border into Pakistan and Iran. The CIA agreed with the proposal, according to the Post's sources, as did the head of the White House Office for Combating Terrorism, Ret. Gen. Wayne A. Downing.

But the cooperation against al Qaeda was not the priority for the anti-Iranian interests in the White House and the Pentagon. Investigative journalist Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" recounts that Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, who chaired an inter-agency committee on Iran policy dealing with issues surrounding Afghanistan, learned that the White House intended to include Iran as a member of the "Axis of Evil" in Bush's State of the Union message in January.

Hadley expressed reservations about that plan at one point, but was told by Bush directly that Iran had to stay in. By the end of December, Hadley had decided, against the recommendations of the State Department, CIA and White House counter-terrorism office, that the United States would not share any information with Iran on al Qaeda, even though it would press the Iranians for such intelligence, as well as to turn over any al Qaeda members it captured to the appropriate home country.

Soon after that decision, hardliners presented Iranian policy to Bush and the public as hostile to U.S. aims in Afghanistan and refusing to cooperate with the war on terror -- the opposite of what officials directly involved had witnessed.

On Jan. 11, 2002, the New York Times quoted Pentagon and intelligence officials as saying that Iran had given "safe haven" to fleeing al Qaeda fighters in order to use them against the United States in post-Taliban Afghanistan. That same day, Bush declared "Iran must be a contributor in the war against terror."

"Our nation, in our fight against terrorism, will uphold the doctrine of 'either you're with us or against us'," he said.

Officials who were familiar with the intelligence at that point agree that the "safe haven for al Qaeda" charge was not based on any genuine analysis by the intelligence community.

"I wasn't aware of any intelligence support that charge," recalls Dobbins, who was still the primary point of contact with Iranian officials about cooperation on Afghanistan. "I certainly would have seen it had there been any such intelligence. Nobody told me they were harbouring al Qaeda."

Iran had already increased its troop strength on the Afghan border in response to U.S. requests. As the Washington Post reported in 2004, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Javad Zarif brought a dossier to U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan in early February with the photos of 290 men believed to be al Qaeda members who already been detained fleeing from Afghanistan.

Later hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees were repatriated to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and other Arab and European countries, according to news reports.

The hardliners would complain that the Iranians did not turn over any top al Qaeda leaders. But the United States had just rejected any exchange of information with the very officials with whom it needed to discuss the question of al Qaeda -- the Iranian intelligence and security ministry.

The same administration officials told the Times that Iran was seeking to exert its influence in border regions in western Afghanistan by shipping arms to its Afghan allies in the war against the Taliban and that this could undermine the interim government and Washington's long-term interests in Afghanistan.

But in March 2002, Iranian official met with Dobbins in Geneva during a U.N. conference on Afghanistan's security needs. Dobbins recalls that the Iranian delegation brought with it the general who had been responsible for military assistance to the Northern Alliance during the long fight against the Taliban.

The general offered to provide training, uniforms, equipment and barracks for as many as 20,000 new recruits for the nascent Afghan military. All this was to be done under U.S. leadership, Dobbins recalls, not as part of a separate programme under exclusive Iranian control.

"The Iranians later confirmed that they did this as a gesture to the United States," says Dobbins.

Dobbins returned to Washington to inform key administration officials of what he regarded as an opportunity for a new level of cooperation in Afghanistan. He briefed then Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Rumsfeld personally. "To my knowledge, there was never a response," he says.

Successfully implemented, they may put Russia in a position to influence the future of regional and world politics strongly. A nuclear Iran is sure to change the security dynamics of the Middle East, and Hamas' participation in peace negotiations with Israel will clearly turn the process into something very different from the Oslo-shaped one.

Russia has also strongly condemned the recent publication in Denmark and some other European nations of cartoons satirizing the Prophet Mohammed as an "inadmissible" provocation against Muslims. Several officials shared the assessment of the situation by Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as a "global crisis" with a potential to escalate beyond the control of governments, while laying partial responsibility for such a development on the Danish government. Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "If a state cannot prevent the publication of things like this, it should at least apologize for them."

What drives Russia's new turn to the East has become a subject of wide-ranging discussions. Many observers pointed out inconsistencies in Russia's position. How can it pressure Iran if the two have so many commercial and geopolitical ties? Is it admissible to shake hands with Hamas if Russia is a member of the Quartet (including the United States, the European Union and the United Nations) and a signatory to the roadmap for peace? Why is it that Russia does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization if the Kremlin fights Chechen terrorists to the bitter end and refuses to enter negotiations with them? Is Moscow seeking to challenge the West's global supremacy, and is it developing Eurasian, rather than European, strategic orientation?

Finding coherent answers to these questions is all the more difficult as the Kremlin has been tight-lipped about its true motives. Putin offered a mere couple of paragraphs explaining his decision to invite Hamas to Moscow, and the Russian Foreign Ministry is yet to substantiate and elaborate on the president's vision.

We are witnessing a foreign policy that has roots in both global and domestic developments. Globally, the Kremlin has been re-evaluating its relations with the United States. Many of Russia's post-September 11, 2001, expectations have not materialized. Military cooperation in Central Asia and Afghanistan is now replaced by rivalry over controlling security space and energy resources. Instead of rebuilding Afghanistan, which is quickly becoming a new safe haven for terrorists, the US launched a war in Iraq.

It also soon became apparent that Washington's strategy of changing regimes and expanding liberty is not limited to the Middle East. The so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia in November 2003 replaced the old regime by popular protest over a rigged parliamentary election and emboldened Washington to apply the strategy elsewhere in the former Soviet region. While the military option was excluded, the emphasis was still on providing opposition with relevant training and financial resources for challenging the old regimes in power.

Moscow has responded by building stronger ties with China, condemning the colored revolutions on its periphery, and taking domestic precautions against possible encroachments on national sovereignty. The Kremlin no longer views Russia-US cooperation in the region as primarily beneficial, and it thinks US presence there invites terrorism, rather than eradicating it.

Russia's perception of the US role in the region as destructive corresponds with perceptions by many Muslims across the world, who view the US "war on terror" as a war on them. What began as a counter-terrorist operation in Afghanistan with relatively broad international support is increasingly turning into a "war of civilizations", or America's crusade against Muslims and their style of living. Instead of engaging moderate Muslims, US policies tend to isolate them and give the cards to radicals.

For instance, the new radical Islamist regime in Iran is a product of the isolationist stance adopted toward the nation by the United States over two decades. US leaders failed to engage moderate politicians such as former presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammed Khatami, who were clear in their intentions to put the 1979 hostage crisis behind them and normalize the relationship with the United States. With aggressive foreign policies pursued by Washington, it was only a matter of time before a large and culturally independent nation such as Iran would empower its own hardliners to respond to America's hardline policies.

The Hamas case is similar, as both the United States and Europe pursued isolationist policies and even tried to pressure Palestinian voters by threatening to cut financial aid in case of a Hamas victory. Europe recently added fuel to the fire by refusing to assume any responsibility for global protests of Muslims over publication of offensive cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. That the United States condemned their publication could not change its already-established image of an imperialist power seeking to offend Muslims. Actions, not words, shape perceptions, and it is perception that constitutes reality.

Implications of the "war of civilizations" for Russia's well-being are fundamental. For a country with 20 million to 25 million Muslims, an involvement in such a war would mean inviting fire to its own home. Russia's domestic intercultural ties are far from balanced. A growing influence of radical Islamist ideologies, rising immigration from Muslim ex-Soviet republics, and poorly conceived actions of some of Russia's local authorities in failing to build ties with Muslims create politically an explosive environment. Although the situation in Chechnya is much more stable today, Islamic radicals are succeeding in spreading violence and extremist ideology across the larger North Caucasus.

It is in this context that one should try to make sense of Russia's Eastern initiatives. They are not anti-Western and do not signal the Kremlin's return to the rhetoric of Eurasianist multipolarity and containment of the West. However, these initiatives do indicate appreciation that the "war of civilizations" between Western nations and Islam is intensifying, as well as understanding that Russia has no business participating in that war. Just as it was a tragic mistake to get involved in World War I in 1914, it would be a tragedy to have a fully hardened Western-Islamic front today and to see Russia joining it.

Russia's willingness to engage Iran and Hamas seeks to compensate for blunders of Western policies in the region, such as calls to boycott elections in Iran or clumsy attempts to pressure Palestinian voters, and to find a way out of a developing inter-civilizational confrontation. Implicitly, the new Kremlin initiatives also fully recognize that the threat of Islamic radicalism in Russia cannot be successfully confronted without reaching out to the Muslim world. Whether or not reports of Hamas' financial support for Chechen radicals are true, it is overdue for Russia to issue a clear statement that it has no plans to be a part of a new world war, but that it is willing to do everything in its power to negotiate the war's end.

Those losing sleep over Russia's new turn to the East should relax. Russia remains a European nation albeit with strong roots outside the West. This does not mean, however, that Samuel Huntington-inspired hopes of Russia joining the "civilized" West against the Eastern "barbarians" have any foundations to them (Huntington, a political scientist, wrote The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order). Russians are more likely to side with voices advocating a dialogue of civilizations.

Politicians such as Mikhail Gorbachev and Mohammed Khatami attempted to articulate humanistic and culturally pluralistic perspectives, but failed to muster support from the "only superpower". Today calls for an "inter-civilizational alliance" and "compromise" are heard again, as Russia, Turkey and Spain try to formulate an alternative to an inter-civilizational war. Until such calls are heard, strengthening a dialogue across cultures remains possible.

Andrei P Tsygankov teaches at San Francisco State University and is author of Russia's Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming) and Whose World Order? Russia's Perception of American Ideas after the Cold War (University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), among others.

(Copyright 2006 Andrei P Tsygankov.)

Vatican prelates have been concerned by recent killings of two Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria. Turkish media linked the death there to the cartoons row. At least 146 Christians and Muslims have died in five days of religious riots in Nigeria.

"If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us," Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.

"We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts," Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.

Reciprocity -- allowing Christian minorities the same rights as Muslims generally have in Western countries, such as building houses of worship or practicing religion freely -- is at the heart of Vatican diplomacy toward Muslim states.

Vatican diplomats argue that limits on Christians in some Islamic countries are far harsher than restrictions in the West that Muslims decry, such as France's ban on headscarves in state schools.

Saudi Arabia bans all public expression of any non-Muslim religion and sometimes arrests Christians even for worshipping privately. Pakistan allows churches to operate but its Islamic laws effectively deprive Christians of many rights.

Both countries are often criticized at the United Nations Human Rights Commission for violating religious freedoms.

"ENOUGH TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK"

Pope Benedict signaled his concern on Monday when he told the new Moroccan ambassador to the Vatican that peace can only be assured by "respect for the religious convictions and practices of others, in a reciprocal way in all societies."

He mentioned no countries by name. Morocco is tolerant of other religions, but like all Muslim countries frowns on conversion from Islam to another faith.

Iraqi Christians say they were well treated under Saddam Hussein's secular policies, but believers have been killed, churches burned and women forced to wear Muslim garb since Islamic groups gained sway after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Christians make up only a tiny fraction of the population in most Muslim countries. War and political pressure in recent decades have forced many to emigrate from Middle Eastern communities dating back to just after the time of Jesus.

As often happens at the Vatican, lower-level officials have been more outspoken than the Pope and his main aides.

"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves," Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, thundered in the daily La Stampa. Jesus told his followers to "turn the other cheek" when struck.

"The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century, mostly for oil, and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights," he said.

Bishop Rino Fisichella, head of one of the Roman universities that train young priests from around the world, told Corriere della Sera the Vatican should speak out more.

"Let's drop this diplomatic silence," said the rector of the Pontifical Lateran University. "We should put pressure on international organizations to make the societies and states in majority Muslim countries face up to their responsibilities."

The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing agency protocol. The Mainichi report did not cite its sources.

Japan has some 600 troops in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah on a humanitarian mission in its largest overseas military deployment since World War II. Tokyo was a vocal backer of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Public opinion polls, however, show most Japanese oppose the mission and news reports have widely speculated that Tokyo would begin to draw down its deployment as soon as March as the British and Australian troops protecting them move out of the area.

Two guards were critically injured in the blast, according to the interior minister's spokesman.

Saudi security consultant Nawaf Obaid said the cars breached the outer security perimeter after opening fire on security guards, killing three and wounding 10, before being stopped at a second security perimeter, where they set off the explosives.

The explosions caused a "minor fire" in a nearby industrial area that was quickly brought under control, the government statements said.

The incident did not affect the facility's operations, said Saudi Oil Minister Ali bin Ibrahim al-Naimi.

The incident happened shortly after 3 p.m. (7 a.m. ET) about 1.5 km (1 mile) from the plant's main entrance, he said.

All of the would-be attackers were killed, according to Obaid and a senior Saudi security official.

Al Qaeda has long called for attacks on Saudi oil installations, accusing the country's government of selling oil to the West at cheap prices, The Associated Press said.

The group is run by the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, who wants to topple the Saudi monarchy and replace it with an Islamic state. The Saudi authorities have said their oil facilities are well protected.

Like the game of a shrewd peddler, who tries hard to gain his customers' trust by a display of false honesty, Noam Chomsky was able - with the help of zionist "criticism" - to gain the trust of people on the Left. Norman Finkelstein, on the other hand, has not done the self promotion propaganda work to the extent that Chomsky has done, therefore his zionist disguise is far more obvious. He has credited himself with exposing the zionist holocaust industry, yet he never exposed the collaboaration of the zionist hierarchy in the mass murder of Europe's non-zionist Jews during the 2nd ww. He purports to support the Palestinian cause yet, like his mentor, he never condemned the zionist apartheid regime of Israel, never supported the right to return of the Palestinian refugees, never supported a democratic non-racist Palestinian state all over historic Palestine. Which brings us to a very interesting article titled, Finkelstein's Boycott: A Meta-Narrative on the Ills of 'Liberal-Zionism', by Mohammed Abed, published on the 12th of February, 2006.
Analysing Norman Finkelstein's article in the Norwegian paper, Aftenposten of the 14th January,2006, Mohammed Abed arrives at the conclusion that the article is no more than the expression of 'Liberal Zionism', which is in opposition to the inalienable rights of the Arab people of Palestine. Here is the relevant part of Abed's article :
http://www.palestinesolidaritymovement.org/mkabed.htm

"Norman Finkelstein's recent article on the 'economic' boycott of Israel ('Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified,' Aftenposten 01.14.2006) appears to take a principled moral stand against injustice in Palestine. Finkelstein's views are couched in the language and methodology of 'objective' scholarship, even if 'editorial' is a more appropriate description of the article's surface form. Consistent with the basic principles of 'semantic sleight of hand,' the article contains more than its fair share of true statements, most of them established by constant references to independent reports produced by International and Israeli human rights organizations, United Nations Resolutions, and various international treaties and conventions to which the state of Israel is a signatory. This 'scholarly' edifice creates and sustains a semantic fugue that deflects the reader's attention away from the highly controversial – if not downright false – claims that Finkelstein smuggles into the article. The author offers no arguments for these claims, and yet they contain the seed of what is, in essence, the 'liberal-Zionist' narrative about resolution of the conflict in historical Palestine. Of course the reality about 'liberal-Zionism' is that it's a contradiction in terms; Zionism is an exclusionary national movement that prevents the return of the Palestinian Refugees and exiles to their homeland on the basis that their presence would 'upset' Israel's Judeo-centric 'demographic' balance, whereas there's nothing in liberal political theory that would justify the state placing limitations on where an individual can live on the basis of nothing more than their ethnic origin. Just as the apparatus of 'scholarly' discourse can be used to legitimize claims that are morally indefensible, 'moderate' Zionists can use the language of liberal-democracy and human rights to conceal a deep ideological affinity with oppressive institutions and an unwillingness to recognize that it's in everybody's long-term interests that those institutions be dismantled."
There is only one mistake in Abed's article, and it is his definition of Zionism : "Zionism is an exclusionary national movement". Zionism is exclusionary alright, but it is not and never has been a "national movement" , simply because there is no "Jewish nation" in reality. Even anti-zionists who do not see zionism as a form of fascism - as I do - do not endorse the definition of zionism as a "national movement". Other than that, Abed's article is excellent ! Here is how Mohammed Abed goes on to expose the dishonesty of Norman Finkelstein :
"Finkelstein tells us that 'the basic terms for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict are embodied in U.N. resolution 242 and subsequent U.N. resolutions, which call for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state in these areas in exchange for recognition of Israel's right to live in peace and security with its neighbors.' The first thing to notice about this claim is its placement in the text. Rather than supporting it with an argument that takes account of all the relevant facts and applies principles the author professes to endorse in an impartial manner, the claim is strategically placed at the conclusion of four long paragraphs that express, in stock scholarly terms, Finkelstein's disapproving attitude towards Israel's policies of wanton killing of Palestinian civilians, torture, house demolition, and the 'apartheid nature' of its regime in the West Bank and Gaza. Since the fourth paragraph contains perhaps the best example of semantic sleight of hand in the entire article, I consider it in more detail below, but for the moment, we can note that nothing in the paragraphs preceding the sentence quoted above provides any support for the idea that 'embodied' in U.N. Resolution 242 are 'the basic terms for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict,' and yet the placement of this claim makes it seem as if the two-state program is the logical outcome of accepting a body of facts about judiciously selected aspects of Israel's human rights record, even though in reality, there is no more than a tenuous connection between the two. The two-state program does not naturally follow from the facts Finkelstein has chosen to highlight, appearances to the contrary, so we might wonder about the set of criteria he's using to determine what counts as an appropriate selection. If we knew this, we would have a basis for explaining why violations that seem to be relevant from a 'human rights' perspective are omitted.
The first point to note in this regard is that on reading Finkelstein's essay, one could be forgiven for thinking that Palestinians residing outside the West Bank and Gaza are not intimately invested in and directly affected by the outcome of the conflict in their homeland. Nothing is said about these invisible persons, even though it's an uncontroversial fact that displacement and exile are insufferable harms that can only be remedied by facilitating their return to Palestine. Unlike 'liberal' and 'Zionist,' there's no contradiction in supporting the right of return and also thinking that the principles of reparative justice should provide the normative basis for an international political culture, unless we believe the bizarre claim that 'right of return' is synonymous with 'throwing the Jews into the sea,' which presumably no reasonable person does. There are also no demographic, territorial, or economic impediments to materializing the return of the refugees, as scholars like Salman Abu-Sitta, Nasser Abufarha and others keep pointing out again and again. Given all this, what justification does Finkelstein have for ignoring the suffering and needs of the majority of Palestinians in the world? Their systematic expulsion from their homeland in 1948 is the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, so facts about the refugees and their plight seem doubly relevant to a discussion of what program of resolution is best, on the principle that in order to resolve a conflict – as opposed to 'managing' or 'containing' it (doublespeak for 'accepting the status quo') – you must address its causes rather than blunting some of its effects."
Mohammed Abed then goes on to expose the hypocricy and dishonesty of both Finkelstein and his mentor Chomsky, who purport to support the Palestinian cause but in reality they defend the zionist aprtheid regime of Israel. Here is Abed again :
"Finkelstein does have a justification for ignoring these facts, although it's not a very good one, and it's certainly at odds with his statements in support of a just resolution in Palestine. Liberal coat of paint or not, it's a basic plank of Zionist politics to ignore aspects of the Palestinian cause that problematize the idea that Israel, conceived of as a state that privileges Jews, is an accomplished fact that cannot be challenged, even if morality requires it. It would make a mockery of the right of self-determination if the Palestinian refugees returned to live under a state that by definition excludes them. A morally adequate program of reparations would therefore include the idea that Israel should be replaced by a political system that impartially guarantees both the individual rights of its citizens and the national equality of Israeli-Jews and Palestinian Arabs in the entire territory of historical Palestine. But an arrangement of this sort is anathema to the Zionist project, and this fact explains why Finkelstein wants to rely so heavily on resolution 242 as the framework for resolving the conflict. 242 and the 'land for peace' formula leaves Israel's ethno-centric character untouched and legitimizes what in other circumstances would be forcefully condemned. One wonders how people concerned with human rights would have reacted if the United Nations called for the territorial partition of South Africa along ethnic lines so that the apartheid regime could live in 'peace and security' with its neighbors. It's difficult to think of a good reason to accept a discourse that relies so heavily on the arbitrary whims of the institution that in 1947 gave 'official' sanction to the idea that 'peace' is synonymous with ethnic separation. After all, this idea initiated the processes that eventually led Israeli forces to cleanse 800,000 Palestinians from the areas that became the state of Israel. But even if we suppose, for the sake of argument, that the United Nations is a legitimate trans-national institution and that majority opinion has anything to do with truth, we could still be forgiven for wondering why Finkelstein would be so adamant about defining the basic parameters of resolution solely in terms of 242 rather than 194 (refugee return) or any of the other resolutions on the books. It's clear from his article that he has faith in multi-lateral institutions, so what could explain this omission?
One possibility is that like his mentor Noam Chomsky, Finkelstein thinks that being 'realistic' or 'practical' about the conflict entails paying nothing more than mere lip service to the rights of the refugees. For Chomsky, 'prudence' also issues in a steadfast refusal to be involved in building a movement that transcends the shortcomings of the two-state framework, even in the face of stark evidence that – morality aside – the policies Israel is currently pursuing 'will abort any possibility of a viable Palestinian state,' to use Finkelstein's words. Chomsky's version of the 'argument from prudence' takes note of the 'international support' that exists for the two-state program but fails to mention consistent international support for the return of the refugees, at least if annual re-affirmations of 194 in the U.N. General Assembly is any indicator of the 'majority opinion' that Finkelstein and Chomsky put so much stock in. The best explanation of this selective deference is the exceptionalism that, as Noah Cohen and others have explained so clearly, propels Chomsky to resist the implementation of basic human rights in Palestine on the grounds that Israel's 'historical vulnerability' makes it unique amongst colonial nations that commit massive atrocities against the indigenous peoples they conquer. As a result, the logic goes, Israel ought to be held to a different set of standards. Perhaps the translation of 'international support' is 'deference to the opinions emanating from the corrupt centers of power [U.S. administration, Israeli government, Palestinian Authority, the amorphous 'Europeans']. After all, the governments and institutions that Chomsky derides with such vehemence in his discussions of other issues don't support the implementation of the right of return, so there's no danger that their policies will challenge Israel's status as an apartheid state.
Again, a pertinent question to ask is whether Chomsky's 'pragmatist' bent would have led him to get firmly behind the 'general will' if the international community had decided to 'come to terms' with the apartheid regime in South Africa, perhaps by accepting that 'water and oil don't mix,' hence the Blacks must be shoved into an ethnic ghetto that would nevertheless remain under the military domination of the apartheid regime. And what would he have said under the condition that the 'general will' was interpreted as being nothing more than the attitude of resistance the United States and other powerful nations displayed towards the prospect of comprehensive decolonization in South Africa? The 'record' shows that whereas Chomsky supported a boycott of the regime in South Africa, he refuses to back a similar boycott of Israel, even though both are apartheid states distinguished only by Israel's relative lack of dependence on indigenous labor, a historical means to creating lebensraum completely untainted by the original inhabitants of the land. In an attempt to make sense out of this inconsistency, Chomsky will often retreat to the even more dubious claim that, since Israeli society will never accept to have even more Arabs live amongst them, the international community should stick to the 'water and oil don't mix' formula that has repeatedly failed to yield peace, despite its ad nauseam application since the partition plan of 1947. Similarly, at one time white South African society would have rejected a life of equality with Blacks, but perhaps one can surmise that in this case, Chomsky would not have so forcefully objected to the idea that the preferences of a racist community are irrelevant to determining what kind of political arrangement international civil society should work towards, or what methods it should use to achieve this end. It seems that in all cases of injustice and resulting conflict, what matters are broad principles and the facts relevant to the application of those principles, of which facts about the whims of an oppressor society are not."(Emphasis added)