The Rhetoric of Peace. (Books).

The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid edited by Roane Carey, with an introduction by Noam Chomsky Verso Books. 354 pages.

The claims and views expressed in this book will be new to many people, judging by the presentation of the new intifada in most mainstream media. As the subtitle suggests, the book offers a revisionist view, but it does so cautiously, presenting fact after fact alongside rigorous argumentation and interpretation. Gradually, as the reader is exposed to the voices of scholars, activists, politicians, schoolteachers, and even children, a coherent picture emerges--one of cruelty and despair, poverty and subjugation, and most of all, a longing for self-determination.

The book's twenty-one chapters provide a detailed description and examination of the power dynamics characterizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The essays cogently uncover the social, political, and economic processes that led to the eruption of the second intifada, corroborating Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's famous claim that "never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed."

Violence, the book attempts to show, has many faces, and one of its most insidious current manifestations is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Most people, including the majority of Israelis, seem unaware that after the Oslo Accords were signed there was neither peace nor prosperity in the territories. The situation of most Palestinians deteriorated, and what appeared to be a promise rapidly turned in the eyes of many of the occupied residents into a curse.

Consider the economy. In one essay, Harvard professor Sara Roy points out that within the first three years following the 1993 Oslo peace agreement, per capita GNP in the West Bank and Gaza Strip fell 37 percent as unemployment soared to 28 percent, one of the highest rates among existing political entities. She mentions the corruption of the Palestinian Authority as one of the reasons for the economic decline but points out that the effect of corruption is minor in comparison to the economic strangulation Israel imposed through the ongoing closures of the territories. Today, no more than two miles from Jerusalem, where the cost of living is similar to that of a major U.S. city, are thousands of Palestinians living on less than $2.10 a day per household--that is, two adults and four children.

The Oslo Accords, not unlike Israel s peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, were based on United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which states that a just and lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors should include two principles: 1) "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict," and 2) respect for the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of war."

Considering that the basis of the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is land for peace, one would have expected Israel to stop building houses and settling Jews in the occupied territories--territories that were to become, according to the agreement, the nascent Palestinian state. Israel, nonetheless, has built more than 20,000 housing units on expropriated Palestinian land since former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords, not counting the construction of new Jewish neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem. Mouin Rabbani, director of the Palestinian American Research Center in the West Bank, points out in his own essay that the Jewish population living in the territories has increased from about 110,000 in 1993 to 195,000 in 2000.

What these numbers plainly indicate is that while Israel is employing the rhetoric of peace, it is doing everything in its power to create an irreversible situation on the ground. The Palestinians that filled the streets in September 2000 knew this all too well and decided that the time had come to expose the wide gap between words and deeds. In this sense, the Palestinian protests were also directed against Chairman Yasser Ararat, who had appropriated the rhetoric of peace while ignoring the reality of everyday life.

The uniqueness of The New Intifada is the way it intertwines scholarly essays with personal stories--stories that provide a face and soul to the occupation's harsh reality. "The Agony of Beit Jala" consists of vignettes written by a high school English teacher and her students. One student, Samar Hazboun, records her experience:

"I heard the gunshots. At first I thought it was going to stop after an hour or two, just like every night. Later, the gunshots got stronger and louder.

"I tried closing my eyes, but the feeling of fear was much too strong.

"At 6 o'clock in the morning, I woke up as usual and got dressed. When I was having breakfast, my dad was listening to the news on the radio. They announced that a German doctor, Harry Fischer from Beit Jala, was shot and passed away. My thoughts started racing. Eventually, I realized that it was my best friend's dad who was dead. Tears wet my cheek. I told my mother that I wanted to call Raphaella, but my mom refused and told me it would be better to wait."

Next appears an entry from the diary of Samar's classmate Raphaella Fischer:

"Looking back at the day when my father was taken away, I remember feeling that my soul was leaving to another zone. For some reason I couldn't understand, I felt like the whole world was going to end, so I screamed and felt I was going to die."

While most of the contributors focus their criticism on Israel, they also underscore the important role the United States has played in this conflict--through its unconditional support for Israel even as it suppresses the Palestinian people. And they do not hesitate to criticize the current Palestinian leadership or the treatment of Palestinian refugees by Arab governments, most conspicuously in Lebanon.

On a few occasions, though, an author ignores or even distorts important facts in order to advance a particular argument. In "The Implementation of the Right of Return," Salman Abu Sitta, for example, does not mention that in 1947 the Palestinian leadership rejected the United Nations partition plan, a fact that is not minor although it can never justify or excuse the massive transfer of Palestinians during the 1948 war. Along the same lines, Abu Sitta attempts to make a demographic argument by putting forward the bogus and irrelevant claim that "about half of the Russian immigrants are not really Jews."

Examples like these, however, are few and far between. While highly critical, the overall analysis is solid, and the writing is eloquent and smooth (probably due to the editor, who is copy chief at The Nation magazine). The book provides a platform for voices that are usually marginalized in the West. The New Intifada is not only timely, but also extremely important.

Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and can be reached at [e-mail].