Who Rules the World? (American Empire Project)

by Noam Chomsky

There are good reasons why Israel opposes the unification of Palestinians. One is that the Hamas-Fatah conflict has provided a useful pretext for refusing to engage in serious negotiations. How can one negotiate with a divided entity? More significantly, for more than twenty years, Israel has been committed to separating Gaza from the West Bank, in violation of the Oslo Accords, which declare Gaza and the West Bank to be an inseparable territorial unity. A look at a map explains the rationale: separated from Gaza, any West Bank enclaves left to Palestinians have no access to the outside world. Furthermore, Israel has been systematically taking over the Jordan Valley, driving out Palestinians, establishing settlements, sinking wells, and otherwise ensuring that the region—about one-third of the West Bank, including much of its arable land—will ultimately be integrated into Israel along with the other regions that Israel is taking over. Hence remaining Palestinian cantons will be completely imprisoned. Unification with Gaza would interfere with these plans, which trace back to the early days of the occupation and have had steady support from the major political blocs, including from figures usually portrayed as doves, like former president Shimon Peres, one of the architects of settlement deep in the West Bank.