The Final Days of the Oslo Accords

Those who stand by the Oslo process rehash arguments ad nauseum that have been disproven.

By Israel Harel, HAARETZ

oslo rabin

In Israel, there is no culture of intellectual debate when it comes to politics. If there were, we would have been witness to the admission by opinion leaders or a gesture on their part to their opponents, stating: You were right. Thousands of victims of the Oslo Accords are not bringing the erroneous side to admit its responsibility for its mistakes. It is digging in to its positions, even during a period like the one we are currently experiencing, instead placing blame on those who foresaw almost exactly the results of the untenable political process. The “peace camp” is paying a heavy price for this. And the more it insists on sticking with its mistakes, and its deceptions, mainly its hatreds, it will continue to pay the price. And this, until it is marginalized in the debate and in its political power. It is already on the verge.

It was clear to anyone with eyes from the beginning that the Oslo process, which set up the Palestinian Authority, was a colossal mistake; that bringing 40,000 members of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Tunisia to Gaza and Jericho would cause war and not peace. Only those who were delirious and remain so up to now with an incurable fever would be able to promise us, as did hundreds of retired colonels and generals from the so-called Peace and Security Association for example, that peace would result from this act of abandon in which enemy soldiers, with their arms, their flag and their devotion to the liberation of Palestine are stationed with our consent next to Jewish populations. (And even when two intifadas proved the fallacy of their approach, that same group of “experts” claimed that uprooting the Jews from the Gaza Strip was essential because it would bring quiet to the communities in the south of the country.)

“Don’t give them rifles,” the sergeants and junior officers said, quoting the poet Nathan Alterman. But the generals derisively dismissed their opinions. The messianic Oslo government led by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres didn’t make do with bringing the enemy army from exile to the land that they longed for. It also saw to it to supplement its equipment. No need to worry, those who gave the inconceivable orders assured, “the weapons are marked.”

Equipped with our marked rifles, the forces that we brought in and equipped have turned on us. As the casualties mounted, as the thousands of pieces of evidence accumulated showing the move was irresponsible on a historic scale, making the intelligence failure in the lead-up to the Yom Kippur War pale by comparison, those deluded and deceptive people held fast to their position. The magnitude of the mistake was matched by the magnitude of the denial, then and up to now.

The debate that has taken shape in recent weeks in advance of the 20th anniversary of Rabin’s murder is characterized by a continued placing of blame for the failure of the Oslo process on those who warned in advance that it was leading to unprecedented disaster. Of course the current stabbing offensive does not have the power to open the eyes of those who blame the defending camp for incitement (saying “Gush Emunim is a cancer in the body of the nation”), instead of the camp and the person doing the inciting. (Perhaps their eyes actually are open, so they continue to incite and lead astray to an even greater extent?)

Even the troubles of the last several months were sowed at Oslo. And those who continue to stand by the process rehash arguments ad nauseum that have been disproven time after time, that post-Rabin Israel is the party that missed the chance for peace. And when an intellectual like political scientist Shlomo Avineri comes and wonders – just wonders, doesn’t affirm – whether there is something inherent in the Arab approach that doesn’t allow it to reach a peace agreement with us, he is immediately attacked by a chorus of those still committed to the mystic faith that has long ago been shattered by reality, that if it were not for the sin of the occupation, the Arab wolf and the Jewish lamb would have already long been living side-by-side in “peace and security.”

October 23, 2015 | 5 Comments »

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  1. Abbas’s brother-in-law gets life-saving heart surgery in Israel

    Amid surge in violence, and despite PM accusing Abbas of lies and incitement, PA president’s relative admitted for treatment at private clinic in Tel Aviv

    http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbass-brother-in-law-gets-life-saving-heart-surgery-in-israel/

    another scene in this theater of the absurd.
    they are stabbing and killing Israelis incited by the PA and BB is giving them hospital treatment in Israel. ReallY??????
    How is it possible to be patriotic to such a government?
    I have never heard of such insanity….
    Obviously BB has his constituents figured out….
    are Israelis lunatic masochists and suckers that they accept such a thing?????

  2. The real tragedy in all this is that it is all – self-inflicted! We really have no one else to blame but ourselves for allowing this folly to take place and perpetuating to this day. We have met the enemy and it is not the pali-posers, Arabs, Muslims, EU or the the UN – it is us!

  3. Look what havoc the Oslo Accords wrought. But it pales in significance to what will happen if we create a Palestinian state as the world is demanding.

    In fact the Oslo Accords were negotiated in secret as a result of US pressure on Israel to make concessions. Once the Declaration of Principles was signed in 1993, Clinton got involved and pressured Rabin to allow the return of the 40,000. No surprise there as Pres Reagan rescued Arafat and the PLO from Beirut and was preserving them in Tunisia for such a moment.

  4. The world celebrated this photograph as symbolizing the glory of peacemaking. As always, the world was dead wrong. This charade represented pure evil. Yasser Arafat was the most prolific murderer of Jews since Hitler, yet he was only the third most contemptible lowlife in that picture. It is the other two Jew haters who make me retch.