Tear Down the Iron Wall, Let the waters from the Oasis Plan Flow
Keynote to Panel III
Schiller Institute Conference
A Beautiful Vision of Humanity in a Time of Great Turmoil
by: Harley Schlanger
May 24, 2025
In the absence of a dramatic announcement by President Trump during his recent ME tour -- there had been speculation that he might endorse the establishment of a Palestinian state -- Benjamin Netanyahu is proceeding with Operation Gideon's Chariots. His goal is to destroy the potential for establishing a Palestinian state, by pursuing a final solution to the Palestinian problem, through mass killing and destruction, to convince those who survive to leave, aided by silence from the West.
Is there hope for an alternative to Netanyahu's genocidal plans?
Lyndon LaRouche identified a solution to the so-called Palestinian problem in 1975.
In April of that year, he travelled to Baghdad, Iraq, for meetings to discuss a change in U.S. policy toward the Arab world and the developing sector in general. Among the topics: a March 12 proposal for a $35 billion fund, financed by Arab oil revenues, presented at the Ninth Arab Oil Conference in Dubai. Members of the LaRouche movement circulated this proposal, presenting it as a seed crystal for development of the poorest countries, and for capital intensive industrial and agricultural development in the Middle East.
LaRouche undertook an organizing drive to counter Henry Kissinger's Petro-dollar swindle, in which profits from the 1973-4 oil hoax were used to bail out Anglo-American banks, in conjunction with International Monetary Fund (IMF)-directed austerity regimes to collect developing sector debt.
LaRouche's proposal was integral to his plan to create an "International Development Bank" -- IDB -- to replace the IMF with a credit institution to fund investment in the real physical economy, i.e., capital goods, productivity-increasing industrial and agricultural programs, and modern infrastructure.
Presented at a press conference in Bonn, West Germany on April 24, 1975, LaRouche's proposal provoked an enraged response from Kissinger, who used his influence to suppress its circulation, while collaborating with British intelligence networks to set up a "Get LaRouche" task force.
The core idea of the IDB was to fund development projects, centered around scientific and technological advances, to accomplish:
1. a massive increase in output and social-productivity of agriculture;
2. industrial development, utilizing the "machine-tool principle";
3. Modernization of infrastructure.
His trip to Baghdad came during a period of increasing instability in southwest Asia following the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Among the events prior to his April meetings in Baghdad were the assassination of Saudi King Fahd in March; and the beginning of 17-year civil war in Lebanon in April.
The IDB plan called for the creation of a credit system to provide long-term, low-interest credits to fund capital investment in projects for an area stretching from Syria to Afghanistan, and from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.
LaRouche wrote that his IDB proposal offered a way out for those seeking peace in the Mideast, as it would enable Israel and key Arab states to begin negotiations for economic cooperation to resolve the Palestinian question, by realizing the intent of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio, which declared "Development is the new name for Peace."
For the rest of his life, LaRouche worked tirelessly to promote an economic policy which would provide mutual benefits for Israel and the Palestinians.
He met with Jewish and Israeli leaders, such as Nahum Goldman of the World Jewish Congress and Abba Eban, with representatives of Arab governments and institutions, and with supportive heads of state, including Indira Gandhi and Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico.
In August 1977, the influential "Israel & Palestine" newsletter published an article by LaRouche, "A Future for the Middle East", in which he summarized his view that agreements in the area of economic cooperation must precede "political agreement". He wrote there must be direct talks between Israel and the PLO, which center on an economic-development package:
"Any other approach will fail, will be quickly degraded into farce - and probable war. However, it is not mere material advantage in itself which provides the basis for peace. It is the fact that a commitment of the governments to realize high rates of scientific and technological progress fosters humanist outlooks."
With this goal in mind, he developed what became known as his Oasis Plan, to address the problem of the severe shortage of fresh water in the region. The next speaker on this panel, Jason Ross, will present a detailed report on the Oasis Plan.
The question I will take up now is, What prevented negotiations from occurring to address this?
There were two factors, which I took up recently in an article published April 11 in the EIR, "Before there was the iron dome, there was the iron wall":
1. How the Zionist movement was utilized by the British empire, as an instrument of imperial geopolitics, as part of its divide-and-conquer policy, as an extension of the City of London's Great Game in central Asia into SW Asia; and
2. The adoption by the Zionists of a doctrine designed to give them control over what they called "Greater Israel", even though the Jews were a distinct minority in the region -- The Iron Wall of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a security doctrine which is still in effect to this day.
What is the Iron Wall?
Jabotinsky wrote, in 1923, that “...there has never been an indigenous inhabitant anywhere or at any time who has ever accepted the settlement of others in his country. Any native people … views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs....
“Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement…. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of ‘Palestine’ into the ‘Land of Israel.’ ”
He continued, writing that the use of force is required to break this resistance, proposing the creation of what he called an Iron Wall: “Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population—an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is...our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy....
"As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes....Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall...[will they] come to us with proposals for mutual concessions."
This has been the strategic doctrine of Israel, since 1948, when David Ben-Gurion adopted it during Israel's War of Independence, which the Arabs identify as the "Nakba", or "Catastrophe". An estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes, many at gunpoint, many fleeing in fear of their lives. Following the 1967 war, it (the Iron Wall) remained the policy for dealing with the Palestinians.
A leading feature of this doctrine, in addition to force as a deterrent, is NO Negotiations or dialogue are allowed.
In August 1990, LaRouche intervened again, writing "A Peace Plan in the true interests of Arabs and Israelis." After asserting that "there is no purely political solution", he explains that the reason for that is that "without a policy of economic development, the Arabs and Israelis have no common basis for political agreement; no common interest. It is only as the Israeli -- not as a Zionist, but as an Israeli -- finds his or her interest to be the economic development of Israel as a nation... as a producer of vegetables, machine tools, technology, and so forth, and the Arab similarly, that both have a fundamental, common interest in the progressive development of the fertility and fecundity of the land of the entire region. On that basis, for the sake of those respective and common economic interests, a political settlement is possible."
The Oslo Accord, which was the product of negotiations, conducted secretly at first, between representatives of Yitzhak Rabin's govt and Yassir Afarat's PLO, represented an opportunity to break from the Iron Wall policy. First, it included the idea of trading land seized in the 1967 war by Israel, for peace. And secondly, it included two "Economic Annexes" as part of the treaty, which was signed at a ceremony at the White House on September 13, 1993. At that signing ceremony, Rabin famously offered a toast to "those with the courage to change axioms."
Annex 3 of the Accord set forth a Protocol on Israeli-Palestinian Cooperation in Economic and Development Programs. The first area of cooperation was the field of water; others were for cooperation in electricity production, energy, finance, transportation, trade and industry. Annex 4 addressed cooperation in regional development programs.
LaRouche's Oasis Plan provided both an outline, and specific details, on how to proceed -- then and now -- as its implementation would offer incentives to all nations in the region to achieve peace through economic development.
But it was sabotaged: Netanyahu personally intervened, creating a climate of hate against Rabin and Oslo, from which a settler extremist emerged and assassinated Rabin on November 4, 1995. It was further sabotaged by international financial institutions which refused to release the funds allocated to begin the projects. Thirty-two years have passed, years of an increasingly brutal occupation, under the doctrine of the Iron Wall.
Acclaimed historian Avi Shlaim reflected on this in an interview with Jacobin magazine in September 2020. Shlaim said the problem is that “Israel’s leaders fell in love with the Iron Wall; they fell in love with military power….” As a result, they are relying on “using military superiority to reach a settlement with the Palestinians…. Netanyahu has never shown any interest in resolving the conflict through negotiations,” he added. “Since 1967, no Israeli government has ever intended to allow an independent Palestinian state.” The one exception to this he cited was the effort by Yitzhak Rabin with the Oslo Accords. “The historical significance of Oslo is that Rabin was the first and only Israeli prime minister who, in good faith, went toward the Palestinians on the political front…. None of his successors were serious about negotiations.”
Netanyahu, by family and political connections, built his career as a ruthless enforcer of the Iron Wall doctrine. His father was the American secretary for Jabotinsky. Today's Likud Party is the successor to Jabotinsky's Herut Party.
In July 2023, Netayahu expressed his adherence to this doctrine: "One hundred years after the Iron Wall was stamped in Jabotinsky's writings we are continuing to successfully implement these principles."
The murder of Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza today, through Operation Gideon's Chariots, are a legacy of the Iron Wall. It must be decisively repudiated by all citizens. It is time to tear down the Iron Wall, and let the waters flow.
I conclude with an historical/philosophical insight from Lyndon LaRouche, from his May 23, 1986 response to Shimon Peres' call for a Mideast Marshall Plan:
"In the relations between Arab and Jew in the Middle East, we discern two opposing cultural movements among each. On the one side, there is the heritage of the Arab Renaissance; on the other side, the Sufism which destroyed that Renaissance from within. Post-Hitler Judaism is of two general views: the one bases itself, optimistically, on 2,000 years of Jewish survival under the diaspora; the other takes Hitler's holocaust, pessimistically, as its point of departure.
"The cultural basis for peace between Arab and Jew, is the coherence of the impulses of the Arab Renaissance to the principles of 2,000 years of Jewish survival in Europe. The function of regional economic development, is to unleash a cultural renaissance among both Arabs and Jews of the region, to establish the movement for stability within each nation, and to foster among the nations a common view of the dignity of the individual, such that the life of the person of each nation is sacred to all nations.
"Economic development by itself, will not suffice to bring the desired renaissance into existence; but that renaissance can not be effected without a basis in vigorous economic development."
In concluding, I repeat: For peace, tear down the Iron Wall, and let the waters of the Oasis Plan flow.
Thank you.
