Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky

by Noam Chomsky

Right now there are huge construction projects going up all over the Occupied Territories (with, as always, U.S. funding), and Israel will just continue with its settlement program [the idea is to “settle” Jewish citizens in the Palestinian territories, which are not officially part of the state of Israel, to solidify Israel’s claim to them]. And what they’ve pretty much been doing is creating a large bulge of Jewish settlers around this big area they call “Greater Jerusalem,” in order to break the West Bank into two separate parts and enclose Jerusalem—they’re basically breaking the West Bank into two cantons, where they’ll then gladly cede authority to the local cops to do the dirty business of keeping order. It would be like asking the New York City police force whether they would like to turn Harlem over to local mercenaries to patrol, while they hold on to Wall Street, the Upper East Side, Madison Avenue, and so on—if you asked the New York City police force that, I’m sure they’d be delighted. Who wants to patrol Harlem?