More than Bush: The U.S. on the Couch

Many people rightly decry the obvious pathology of GWB, from his childhood enjoyment of exploding frogs with fireworks, progressing apparently to the personal organzation of "harsh interrogations" in secret prisons around the world. (You honestly didn't think that Abu Grahub and Gitmo were the only ones did you??).

But Bush is only the final expression, the fruit of a long decent into societal sociopathy. Even if you aren't a clinical sociopath, you've had to adopt some of their strategies just to survive. Dr. Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology will go a long way to helping you understand how we got to this terrible place and how, just possibly, we might get out. Comments are courtesy of the ever insightful team at SOTT

Blue Ibis

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USA: Sociopath Nation

The Daily Burkeman 1
Thu, 15 May 2008 06:23 EDT

In writing yesterday's post on a few basic operating truisms of American foreign policy I was reminded of a blog post that compared the underlying ideas and motivations of US foreign policy to the malignant dementia that laid inside the Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui.

Re-reading that post by Arthur Silber (which I highly recommend you read in full) I decided to see if there was any relation between how the US acts abroad and the clinical personality attributes of a sociopath.

I found this bullet list for profiling a sociopath. Let's take a look and see if there are any match ups.

Manipulative and Conning

They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.

Ding. First match. The US does not even recognize defending oneself from US attack as permissible. We are a country that snatches people off the streets in sovereign foreign countries and spirits them out illegally to be tortured and perhaps murdered in the gulags and dungeons of third world client states. Other nations have no rights. Iran's right to nuclear power under signed treaty? Simply ignored by the US as it violates the Nuclear non proliferation treaty with complete impunity and even strong arms the UN to put mild sanctions on Iran for absolutely no justified reason. Afghanistan asks that the US provide evidence of OBL's complicity in 9/11 before they hand him over in accordance with ancient diplomatic protocols? Ignored and America was outraged that we were even asked to comply with such long established standards in diplomacy. What the US does is always permissible.

We recognize no bounds on our actions- even our own laws. Torture? Not torture when the US does it. Geneva convention? Ignored. We are not bound by what the rest of the world must be bound by.

How about the need to dominate and humiliate their victims? One need take no further look than to Saddam Hussein being shabbily humiliated (again- against the Geneva convention) as he was paraded before American Telescreens like a captured ape, humiliated repeatedly in captivity with leaks about his habits and behaviors, and then his disgusting execution at the hands of his political domestic enemies in a circus like atmosphere. But if one needs to look further then see also Slobodan Milosevic and Manuel Noreiga. And then, of course, is the torture regime personally approved by the President's men that has sexual humiliation and degradation as centerpieces and which continues on today unabated and quite illegally (and what the President says in a signing statement doesn't make it legal).

Pathological Lying

Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

An obvious match that almost deserves no comment. The lies, obvious lies, insulting lies are perhaps the most prominent thing one notices about this adminstration. (Note- when I mean "one" I mean people who are not cool aiding Bushbots. BOTS are too far removed from anything resembling reality to even consider them as sentient humans). They even lie about their lies.

But it isn't just the administration. It is all of the Beltway and our elite and most Americans who have managed to ignore the evidence of experience and still insist on operating from an elaborate complex web of lies in foreign policy that date well back into the 80's. And as all actions taken by the US (especially in Iraq) are based upon these lies- they are DOOMED to yet more failure.

And what is "nation building" itself if not the ultimate form of lying to oneself and attributing to yourself superhero powers?

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt

In this administration? Remorse? Shame? Guilt? You got to be kidding me. Not a spec. But this isn't just an attribute of the Bush Junta. This is endemic throughout American society. Remorse, shame, and guilt are things to be overcome in therapy in American society. They are emotions to be squelched with happy pills. They are weaknesses. They are "unfair".

But keeping this strictly limited to a discussion of our political class- those are emotions that are only assumed as a last resort and quite disingenuously and only if all other "options" failed first- those other "options" being . . . denial, lying, cries of hypocrisy, and counter accusations (almost always false and always besides the point) against your accusers.

Grandiose Sense of Self

Do any other countries refer to themselves as the "indispensable nation"? As a "Shining city on a Hill?" As the "last best hope of mankind?" Left, Right, liberal, conservative, Republican or Democrat. America is the center of the world. To our elite- America is the culmination of all human societal evolution. We are what was intended by whatever force controls destiny! We judge the actual worth of every other country and culture on Earth to how closely or distantly they are from matching up to American civilization. We are the benchmark for the world.

Comment: As myth goes, actually Israel is the "benchmark for the world", America comes next. Sorry...

Sociopath America doesn't give a turd about the rest of the world. Doesn't care what happens in it and is only dimly aware an outside world exists. And what there is of this slender reed of ignorant knowledge of the outside world is about "enemies" seeking to "kill us".

Events that occur outside this country are only of interest to Americans insofar as they involve us in even a slight way. Burma cyclone? There cannot be a story about it without literally half of it being about us and our reaction to it and how awesome we are to "care".

Comment: The US government goes to great lengths to show it cares!

Anyway- I digress a bit. Back to the "indispensable nation". Let's use Maddie Albright as an example of standard insano sociopath rhetoric that routinely pours forth from the mouths of our politicians:

If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.

Yikes. Let's put that into the mouth of a co-worker at the corporate cubby hole slave pen you toil away at? You are eating lunch at the food court and all of a sudden George, the quiet dumpy guy from accounting, says:

"If I have to use force, it is because I am me. I am the indispensable employee. I stand tall. I see further into the future."

I don't know about you but my reaction to George's statement would be to report his demented ass to HR and plan an escape route from the office cube maze for when he goes on a workplace killing spree. But when such insane Cho Hui Seung lines come out of the mouths of our elite Politicians we don't bat an eye and never think for a second how this is viewed by the rest of the world.

And that Albright quote is pretty tame fare actually for a Sociopath America politician. Bush claims God instructs him to attack nations! For a more rabid sociopath performance see this speech by Zell Miller at the 2004 GOP convention. That speech is a perfect synopsis of the American pysche. Fully deranged beyond measure, utterly lacking in empathy, angry, paranoid, grandiose . . . a clinical text book example of a sociopath. By the way I am not saying Albright is a sociopath. Most of our politicians aren't (though there are a far higher percentage of such malignant personalities among them than in the general population.) She wouldn't dream of saying that about herself specifically and I doubt she exhibits in her personal life any of the major warning signs of a sociopath personality disorder.

But when it comes to the collective conscious of many Americans and our national self image- it is cuckoo time. We are stark raving mad. We are criminally insane. We accept statements about ourselves and the country from politicians that go far beyond just garden variety narcissism.

Shallow Emotions

Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person.

Several months ago a security cam tape emerged of a young mother, whose 4 year old had been on a wild tantrum, spraying the child with the low pressure power washer at a "do-it-yourself" carwash. At roughly the same time a peer reviewed academic/medical study placed the number of Iraqi civilian premature deaths since the American invasion at 1 million souls.

The study received almost no MSM coverage. The sprayed child however outraged Americans from coast to coast and was broadcast ad nauseum for over a week.

This is typical. DC's little proxy state in the ME, Israel, murders 1800 Lebanese civilians from the air and the country yawns. Iran's President says "gays" don't exist in his country and it is national talk radio cud for days.

What of government itself and not just society at large in this regard? Well, let's see; while George Bush basically violates entire swaths of laws and provisions of the constitution- while evidence lies exposed on the floor of his myriad crimes and even treason Congressmen and Senators are preening before cameras while badgering baseball players about what sorts power bars they eat and shakes they drink.

I could sit here all day and write lists of the truly monumental trivia Congress finds the time to "investigate" while a President brings us back to an era of legal witch doctorism and concentrations of political power not seen since the Pharaohs. But I won't bore you to death.

There is more, much more! This is just the appetizer of what could end up being a three parter. . . . stay tuned for "USA: Sociopath Nation, Part Two", no later than Monday . . .

USA: Sociopath Nation Part II

I said I would post Part II of "USA: Sociopath Nation" by no later than Monday . . . but forgive me as my sustenance must come before this blog.

Where were we? Ah yes, listing the clinical attributes and behaviors of a text book sociopath to those of the United States federal government and to a lessor extent society at large.

Well, let's jump right back in . . .

Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, [and no concern for the impression on others this attitude produces.]

Does there exist a country more convinced of its brilliance and more sure of its power to achieve literally anything? Our political elite recognizes no limits to its power, no limits to what is within its purview.

What isn't the business of the United States is the question, not {what is?}. I posted recently about how the Pentagon has literally divided up the world into strategic "Commands" and assigned a whole bureaucracy to each one, including a parallel diplomatic division to the civilian State Department. Every square inch of real estate and every cubic meter of water on this planet is covered by one of these "Command" zones.

A cyclone hits Burma {Myanmar} and the junta doesn't grant the US military a free pass in and out of the country for "relief" operations? Why then! It is time for our most serious and respected of pundits to float invasion and nation building plans! Nothing is not our business and nothing - including managing and transforming a country our elite know even less about than Iraq (if that is even possible)- is beyond our capability.

Here we have Robert Kaplan, having learned absolutely nothing clamoring and baying for a nation building war against Iraq, actually toying with the idea of invading and nation building Burma as well. Don't worry though. He appears to have read a whole Wikipedia entry on Burma before he wrote this column.

My favorite all time column that perfectly encapsulates this insanely blithe attitude toward managing distant peoples and nations and cultures though has to be "Exporting Switzerland, The model Iraq needs to follow" by the boy wonder of National Review, Jonah Goldberg. This column, which you must read to believe, written shortly after the formal shooting "war" with Saddam's army had ended in April of 2003 is depressingly perfect for this example of the "all-knowing" and "all-powerful" attributes of the sociopath. Goldberg just announces that now that the war is won he thinks- abra cadabra, presto, that Iraq should be made into Switzerland!

Oh ok Jonah. Why didn't we think of that for Detroit? Yeah. Thank you Jonah. Now sit down. It is finger painting time! Good lord! And I used to read that magazine with relish every two weeks for 15 years.

Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause.

We can find out the names, including middle initial, of every American soldier who has been killed in Iraq in seconds. We can also find out exactly where he was killed, what day, what hour, and the circumstances under which he died. We can find out numerous info about American wounded in Iraq. How many, what types of wound, what sorts of treatment they are receiving . . . the amount of info and data available to us on American casualties in Iraq is staggering.

But Iraqi dead? Nothing. We "don't do body counts" for them. They are so worthless to us we don't even track how many have died. Well- some websites do but not our government officially. Bush once said he thought it was something like 30 thousand had died. That was 2 years ago. And that of course was a laughable underestimation. Iraq has been destroyed. Our government does not keep count and when independent studies come out right wing groups attack them with sophistry and spray rhetorical turd mist around their numbers while offering ludicrous numbers they pulled out of their asses. All this time - our government and military doesn't say anything which tells us all we need to know about who is telling the truth. About Afghanistan civilian dead we know even less. Somalia? Less still. Millions displaced - perhaps as much as 7 million taking Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia in to consideration. And how many dead? A million? Two million? We don't know, don't want to know, and don't care.

But a hundred thousand people get killed in Darfur and a few hundred thousand more refugees? Oh - that our "left wing" actors care about. That is the fraud cause de juor we are supposed to be all concerned about. Oh - and Tibet. A couple protesters were killed in Tibet a month back dontcha know! Sanctions on China!

The US government has stats on the populations of endangered varieties of slugs. But official stats on Iraqis war dead? Nope.

That goes back to the sociopath attribute in the first part of this essay last week . . . "indifference to major traumatic events while becoming enraged at minor matters."

[See the section on "The Hysteriodal Cycle" in Ponerology.]

Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

Who is responsible for Iraq today? Who made it the way it is today? Well, reading our media and listening to our government the list is a long one. But it doesn't include us. Not for a second. We are blameless . . . for everything. "Blame America First"? We never blame ourselves for anything! That is one of those inane phrases that reich wingers chant in response to any real world analysis of American foreign policy and that is their argument . . . in toto. That stupid phrase.

Why did we invade Iraq? Well Saddam was lying about having WMD. He was lying that he did have them to scare Iran. If only he had told us he didn't have them we would not have invaded! It's Saddam's fault!

That is actually an argument you come across among the more retarded of Bush and Neoconned faithful- that Saddam lied so well about having WMD when he didn't that we were fooled and invaded him. Saddam's fault. Amazing that anyone could believe that crap? Not amazing if your collective conscious is that of a sociopath.

Who else is to blame? Oh yeah- France. France was "paid off" by Saddam in pennies under the "Oil for Food" program so they let his regime survive.

More? Yup. Iran is too blame. And Syria. And Moooslims in general. Even Iraqis themselves are to blame. The US actually accuses Iran of "meddling" in Iraq. The US, which is 6000 miles away for Iraq, which flies in most of its supplies to Iraq for its armies which are squatting there based on lies, has the balls to accuse Iran of "meddling" with its next door freakin neighbor as if it is none of their business!

By the way. The US accuses Iran, without a shred of believable or even coherent evidence, of "undermining" the Iraq government and aiding "terrorists" while at the same time the US passes bills in public that authorize funds for the . . . undermining of Iran's government and the aiding of terrorists in their country! That isn't sick deranged weird behavior? That isn't insane?

Anyone else get the blame? Yep. The Iraqi people. They are to blame. Which leads us to this compliment to the attribute of the sociopath directly above.

Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim's affirmation (respect, gratitude, and love.)

Americans actually expect to be thanked by the occupants of foreign countries we invade spreading death, chaos, misery, and suffering. Our Neocons expected flowers to be thrown at Americans when they entered Baghdad (after 50 years of playing the most cynical and self serving of games with that country that had directly caused untold suffering on just about every family in Iraq). There wasn't a rational reason in the world to believe this would be the case. Even opponents of Saddam who liked Western ways hated the United States for murderous policies of the last half century toward that country. They had to fly in Iraqi ex-pat Quislings to topple Saddam's statue for American TeeVee cameras!

In the 1960's war epic movie The Longest Day there is a scene where a Frenchman is shown cheering on the American invasion of Normandy while bombs explode all around him. I guess he didn't have to worry as they were "liberty bombs". That is how Americans literally expect foreigners to behave when we invade and murder them from the air- cheering on their own deaths and destruction like that fictional Frenchman in some sappy dumb-assed H-wood World War II fantasy movie.

And we are enraged when they don't thank us.

Here is Neocon and an Israel Firsting traitor, Daniel Pipes, in response to a question about the biggest lesson he learned from the Iraq war in April of 2006:

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them -- to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture.

Yes. He said that. Let's repeat that:

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A:The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them . . .

Three years after the invasion of Iraq and the "biggest lesson" Daniel, "Middle East Expert", Pipes learned was that the Iraqi people are ingrates? And with that ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you my diagnosis . . .

Applying Lessons of Imperialism: Zionism Learns Fast

Crosses, double-crosses, triple-crosses. This is the history of Zionist behaviour towards the people who's land they stole. Crying "Peace, peace" but in action, promoting everything but. And it sure appears the psychopaths in charge of Israel are almost enjoying it.

Jonathan Cook is a resident of Nazareth. He knows where of he speaks.

Blue Ibis
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Divide and rule, Israeli style

Jonathan Cook
The Electronic Intifada
Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:46 EDT

©Omar Rashidi/MaanImages/POOL/PPO

After deposing the Hamas government, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abas meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt. King Abdullah of Jordan and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak were also present at the meeting arranged to discuss Hamas' control of Gaza, 25 June 2007.

The boycott by Israel and the international community of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces with Hamas' recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy, one of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. "Starving, drying up and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do not weaken political movements. On the contrary ... Reality has refuted the chorus of experts and commentators who preached [on] behalf of the boycott policy. This daft notion that it is possible to topple an elected government by applying pressure on a helpless population suffered a complete failure."

But has Levy got it wrong? The faces of Israeli and American politicians, including Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush, appear soot-free. On the contrary. Over the past fortnight they have been looking and sounding even more smug than usual.

The problem with Levy's analysis is that it assumes that Israel and the US wanted sanctions to bring about the fall of Hamas, either by giving Fatah the upper hand so that it could deal a knockout blow to the Palestinian government, or by inciting ordinary Palestinians to rise up and demand that their earlier electoral decision be reversed and Fatah reinstalled. In short, Levy, like most observers, assumes that the policy was designed to enforce regime change.

But what if that was not the point of the sanctions? And if so, what goals were Israel and the US pursuing?

The parallels between Iraq and Gaza may be instructive. After all, Iraq is the West's only other recent experiment in imposing sanctions to starve a nation. And we all know where it led: to an even deeper entrenchment of Saddam Hussein's rule.

True, the circumstances in Iraq and Gaza are different: most Iraqis wanted Saddam out but had no way to effect change, while most Gazans wanted Hamas in and made it happen by voting for them in last year's elections. Nevertheless, it may be that the US and Israel drew a different lesson from the sanctions experience in Iraq.

Whether intended or not, sanctions proved a very effective tool for destroying the internal bonds that held Iraqi society together. Destitution and hunger are powerful incentives to turn on one's neighbor as well as one's enemy. A society where resources -- food, medicines, water and electricity -- are in short supply is also a society where everyone looks out for himself. It is a society that, with a little prompting, can easily be made to tear itself apart.

And that is precisely what the Americans began to engineer after their "shock and awe" invasion of 2003. Contrary to previous US interventions abroad, Saddam was not toppled and replaced with another strongman -- one more to the West's liking. Instead of regime change, we were given regime overthrow. Or as Daniel Pipes, one of the neoconservative ideologues of the attack on Iraq, expressed it, the goal was "limited to destroying tyranny, not sponsoring its replacement ... Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden."

In place of Saddam, the Americans created a safe haven known as the Green Zone from which its occupation regime could loosely police the country and oversee the theft of Iraq's oil, while also sitting back and watching a sectarian civil war between the Sunni and Shia populations spiral out of control and decimate the Iraqi population.

What did Washington hope to achieve? Pipes offers a clue: "When Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims [that is, US occupation forces and their allies] are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one." In other words, enabling a civil war in Iraq was far preferable to allowing Iraqis to unite and mount an effective resistance to the US occupation. After all, Iraqi deaths -- at least 650,000 of them, according to the last realistic count -- are as good as worthless, while US soldiers' lives cost votes back home.

["Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one."!! If that isn't a psychopath in full flight, what is?]

For the neocon cabal behind the Iraq invasion, civil war was seen to have two beneficial outcomes.

First, it eroded the solidarity of ordinary Iraqis, depleting their energies and making them less likely to join or support the resistance to the occupation. The insurgency has remained a terrible irritation to US forces but not the fatal blow it might have been were the Sunni and Shia to fight side by side. As a result, the theft of Iraq's resources has been made easier.

And second, in the longer term, civil war is making inevitable a slow process of communal partition and ethnic cleansing. Four million Iraqis are reported to have been forced either to leave the country or flee their homes. Iraq is being broken up into small ethnic and religious fiefdoms that will be easier to manage and manipulate.

[Amazing! Just what the "Clean Break" paper, prepared for Israel in 1996 by US Neocons proposed as being the most advantageous to it.]

Is this the model for Gaza now and the West Bank later?

It is worth recalling that neither Israel nor the US pushed for an easing of the sanctions on the Palestinian Authority after the national unity government of Hamas and Fatah was formed earlier this year. In fact, the US and Israel could barely conceal their panic at the development. The moment the Mecca agreement was signed, reports of US efforts to train and arm Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas became a newspaper staple.

The cumulative effect of US support for Fatah, as well as Israel's continuing arrests of Hamas legislators in the West Bank, was to strain already tense relations between Hamas and Fatah to breaking point. When Hamas learned that Abbas' security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, with US encouragement, was preparing to carry out a coup against them in Gaza, they got the first shot in.

Did Fatah really believe it could pull off a coup in Gaza, given the evident weakness of its forces there, or was the rumour little more than American and Israeli spin, designed to undermine Hamas' faith in Fatah and doom the unity government? Were Abbas and Dahlan really hoping to topple Hamas, or were they the useful idiots needed by the US and Israel? These are questions that may have to be settled by the historians.

But with the fingerprints of Elliott Abrams, one of the more durable neocons in the Bush administration, to be found all over this episode, we can surmise that what Washington and Israel are intending for the Palestinians will have strong echoes of what has unfolded in Iraq.

By engineering the destruction of the unity government, Israel and the US have ensured that there is no danger of a new Palestinian consensus emerging, one that might have cornered Israel into peace talks. A unity government might have found a formula offering Israel:

- limited recognition inside the pre-1967 borders in return for recognition of a Palestinian state and the territorial integrity of the West Bank and Gaza;
- a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel ending its campaign of constant violence and violations of Palestinian sovereignty;
- and a commitment to honor past agreements in return for Israel's abiding by UN resolutions and accepting a just solution for the Palestinian refugees.

After decades of Israeli bad faith, and the growing rancor between Fatah and Hamas, the chances of them finding common ground on which to make such an offer, it must be admitted, would have been slight. But now they are non-existent.

That is exactly how Israel wants it, because it has no interest in meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians or in a final agreement. It wants only to impose solutions that suit Israel's interests, which are securing the maximum amount of land for an exclusive Jewish state and leaving the Palestinians so weak and divided that they will never be able to mount a serious challenge to Israel's dictates.

Instead, Hamas' dismal authority over the prison camp called Gaza and Fatah's bastard governance of the ghettoes called the West Bank offer a model more satisfying for Israel and the US -- and one not unlike Iraq. A sort of sheriff's divide and rule in the Wild West.

Just as in Iraq, Israel and the US have made sure that no Palestinian strongman arises to replace Yasser Arafat. Just as in Iraq, they are encouraging civil war as an alternative to resistance to occupation, as Palestine's resources -- land, not oil -- are stolen. Just as in Iraq, they are causing a permanent and irreversible partition, in this case between the West Bank and Gaza, to create more easily managed territorial ghettoes. And just as in Iraq, the likely reaction is an even greater extremism from the Palestinians that will undermine their cause in the eyes of the international community.

Where will this lead the Palestinians next?

Israel is already pulling the strings of Fatah with a new adeptness since the latter's humiliation in Gaza. Abbas is currently basking in Israeli munificence for his rogue West Bank regime, including the decision to release a substantial chunk of the $700 million tax monies owed to the Palestinians (including those of Gaza, of course) and withheld for years by Israel. The price, according to the Israeli media, was a commitment from Abbas not to contemplate re-entering a unity government with Hamas.

The goal will be to increase the strains between Hamas and Fatah to breaking point in the West Bank, but ensure that Fatah wins the confrontation there. Fatah is already militarily stronger and with generous patronage from Israel and the US -- including arms and training, and possibly the return of the Badr Brigade currently holed up in Jordan -- it should be able to rout Hamas. The difference in status between Gaza and the West Bank that has been long desired by Israel will be complete.

The Palestinian people have already been carved up into a multitude of constituencies. There are the Palestinians under occupation, those living as second-class citizens of Israel, those allowed to remain "residents" of Jerusalem, and those dispersed to camps across the Middle East. Even within these groups, there are a host of sub-identities: refugees and non-refugees; refugees included as citizens in their host state and those excluded; occupied Palestinians living under the control of the Palestinian Authority and those under Israel's military government; and so on.

Now, Israel has entrenched maybe the most significant division of all: the absolute and irreversible separation of Gaza and the West Bank. What applies to one will no longer be true for the other. Each will be a separate case; their fates will no longer be tied. One will be, as Israelis like to call it, Hamastan, and other Fatahland, with separate governments and different treatment from Israel and the international community.

The reasons why Israel prefers this arrangement are manifold.

First, Gaza can now be written off by the international community as a basket case. The Israeli media is currently awash with patronizing commentary from the political and security establishments about how to help avoid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the possibility of air drops of aid over the Gaza "security fence" -- as though Gaza were Pakistan after an earthquake. From past experience, and the current menacing sounds from Israel's new Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, those food packages will quickly turn into bombs if Gaza does not keep quiet.

As Israeli and US officials have been phrasing it, there is a new "clarity" in the situation. In a Hamastan, Gaza's militants and civilians can be targeted by Israel with little discrimination and no outcry from the international community. Israel will hope that message from Gaza will not be lost on West Bank Palestinians as they decide who to give their support to, Fatah or Hamas.

Second, at their meeting last week Olmert and Bush revived talk of Palestinian statehood. According to Olmert, Bush "wants to realize, while he is in office, the dream of creating a Palestinian state." Both are keen to make quick progress, a sure sign of mischief in the making. Certainly, they know they are now under no pressure to create the single viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza once promised by President Bush. An embattled Abbas will not be calling for the inclusion of Gaza in his ghetto-fiefdom.

Third, the separation of Gaza from the West Bank may be used to inject new life into Olmert's shopworn convergence plan -- if he can dress it up in new clothes. Convergence, which required a very limited withdrawal from those areas of the West Bank heavily populated with Palestinians while Israel annexed most of its illegal colonies and kept the Jordan Valley, was officially ditched last summer after Israel's humiliation by Hizballah.

Why seek to revive convergence? Because it is the key to Israel securing the expanded Jewish fortress state that is its only sure protection from the rapid demographic growth of the Palestinians, soon to outnumber Jews in the Holy Land, and Israel's fears that it may then be compared to apartheid South Africa.

If the occupation continues unchanged, Israel's security establishment has long been warning, the Palestinians will eventually wake up to the only practical response: to dissolve the Palestinian Authority, Israel's clever ruse to make the Palestinian leadership responsible for suppressing Palestinian resistance to the occupation, thereby forcing Israel to pick up the bill for the occupation rather than Europe. The next stage would be an anti-apartheid struggle for one state in historic Palestine.

For this reason, demographic separation from the Palestinians has been the logic of every major Israeli policy initiative since -- and including -- Oslo. Convergence requires no loss of Israel's control over Palestinian lives, ensured through the all but finished grid of walls, settlements, bypass roads and checkpoints, only a repackaging of their occupation as statehood.

The biggest objection in Israel to Olmert's plan -- as well as to the related Gaza disengagement -- was the concern that, once the army had unilaterally withdrawn from the Palestinian ghettoes, the Palestinians would be free to launch terror attacks, including sending rockets out of their prisons into Israel. Most Israelis, of course, never consider the role of the occupation in prompting such attacks.

But Olmert may believe he has found a way to silence his domestic critics. For the first time he seems genuinely keen to get his Arab neighbors involved in the establishment of a Palestinian "state". As he headed off to the Sharm al-Sheikh summit with Egypt, Jordan and Abbas this week, Olmert said he wanted to "jointly work to create the platform that may lead to a new beginning between us and the Palestinians."

Did he mean partnership? A source in the Prime Minister's Office explained to The Jerusalem Post why the three nations and Abbas were meeting. "These are the four parties directly impacted by what is happening right now, and what is needed is a different level of cooperation between them." Another spokesman bewailed the failure so far to get the Saudis on board.

This appears to mark a sea change in Israeli thinking. Until now Tel Aviv has regarded the Palestinians as a domestic problem -- after all, they are sitting on land that rightfully, at least if the Bible is to be believed, belongs to the Jews. Any attempt at internationalizing the conflict has therefore been strenuously resisted.

But now the Israeli Prime Minister's Office is talking openly about getting the Arab world more directly involved, not only in its usual role as a mediator with the Palestinians, nor even in simply securing the borders against smuggling, but also in policing the territories. Israel hopes that Egypt, in particular, is as concerned as Tel Aviv by the emergence of a Hamastan on its borders, and may be enticed to use the same repressive policies against Gaza's Islamists as it does against its own.

Similarly, Olmert's chief political rival, Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, has mentioned not only Egyptian involvement in Gaza but even a Jordanian military presence in the West Bank. The "moderate" Arab regimes, as Washington likes to call them, are being seen as the key to developing new ideas about Palestinian "autonomy" and regional "confederation." As long as Israel has a quisling in the West Bank and a beyond-the-pale government in Gaza, it may believe it can corner the Arab world into backing such a "peace plan."

What will it mean in practice? Possibly, as Zvi Barel of Haaretz speculates, we will see the emergence of half a dozen Palestinian governments in charge of the ghettoes of Gaza, Ramallah, Jenin, Jericho, and Hebron. Each may be encouraged to compete for patronage and aid from the "moderate" Arab regimes but on condition that Israel and the US are satisfied with these Palestinian governments' performance.

In other words, Israel looks as if it is dusting off yet another blueprint for how to manage the Palestinians and their irritating obsession with sovereignty. Last time, under Oslo, the Palestinians were put in charge of policing the occupation on Israel's behalf. This time, as the Palestinians are sealed into their separate prisons masquerading as a state, Israel may believe that it can find a new jailer for the Palestinians -- the Arab world.

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). His website is www.jkcook.net