The Oslo blood libel is over. So is OSLO.

When you read the Trump plan closely, you realize it is a mirror image of the Oslo Accords. Rather than Israel being required to prove its good will, the Palestinians are required to prove their commitment to peace.

by  Caroline B. Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM

From 1994 through 1996, as a captain in the IDF, I served as a member of Israel’s negotiating team with the PLO. Those years were the heyday of the so-called peace process. As the coordinator of negotiations on civil affairs for the Coordinator of Government Activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, I participated in all of the negotiating sessions with the Palestinians that led to a half a dozen or so of agreements, including the Interim or Oslo B agreement from September 28, 1995, which transferred civil and military authorities in Judea and Samaria to the PLO.

Throughout the period of my work, I never found any reason to believe the peace process I was a part of would lead to peace. The same Palestinian leaders who joked with us in fancy meeting rooms in Cairo and Taba breached every commitment they made to Israel the minute the sessions ended.

Beginning with the PLO’s failure to amend its covenant that called for Israel’s destruction in nearly every paragraph; through their refusal to abide by the limits they had accepted on the number of weapons and security forces they were permitted to field in the areas under their security control; their continuous breaches of zoning and building laws and regulations; to their constant Nazi-like anti-Semitic propaganda and incitement and solicitation of terrorism against Israel – it was self-evident they were negotiating in bad faith. They didn’t want peace with Israel. They were using the peace process to literally take Israel apart piece by piece.

Israel’s leaders shrugged it off. Instead of protesting and cutting off contact until Yasser Arafat and his henchmen ended their perfidious behavior, Israel’s leaders ignored what was happening before their faces. And in a way, they had no option of doing anything else.

When Israel embarked on the Oslo peace process it accepted Oslo’s foundational assumption that Israel is to blame for the Palestinian war against it. From the first Oslo agreement, signed on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, through all its derivative deals, Israel was required to carry out “confidence-building measures,” to prove its good faith and peaceful intentions to Arafat and his deputies.

Time after time, Israel was required to release terrorists from prison as a precondition for negotiations with the PLO. The goal of those negotiations in turn was to force Israel to release more terrorists from prison, and give more land, more money, more international legitimacy and still more terrorists to the PLO.

On Tuesday, this state of affairs ended.

On Sunday morning, just before he flew to Washington, US Ambassador David Friedman briefed me on the details of President Donald Trump’s peace plan at his home in Herzliya.

Friedman told me that Trump was going to announce that the United States will support an Israeli decision to apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria.

 I asked what the boundaries of the settlements would be.

He said that they have a map, it isn’t precise, so it can be flexibly interpreted but it was developed in consultation with Israeli government experts.

Suspicious, I went granular. Khan al-Ahmar is an illegal, strategically located Beduin encampment built on the access road to Kfar Adumim, a community north of Jerusalem. Israel’s Supreme Court ordered its removal, but bowing to pressure from Germany and allegedly, the International Criminal Court, the government has failed to execute the court order.

I asked if Khan al-Ahmar is part of Kfar Adumim on the American map. Friedman answered in the affirmative.

What about the area called E1, which connects the city of Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem?

Yes, it’s inside the map, he said.

How about the illegal building right outside the northern entrance to my community, Efrat, south of Jerusalem in Gush Etzion. The massive illegal building there threatens to turn Efrat’s highway access road into a gauntlet. Is that area going to be under Israeli jurisdiction?

He nodded.

How about the isolated communities – Yitzhar, Itamar, Har Bracha? Are they Israel?

Yes, yes, yes, he said. Our map foresees Israel applying its sovereignty to about half of Area C, he explained.

What about the other half? Without control of the surrounding areas, the communities in Judea and Samaria will be under constant threat. Their development will be stifled by limitations on the development of critical infrastructure.

For now, Friedman replied, everything in the rest of Area C will be governed as it has been up until now. Israel will have overriding civilian powers and sole security authority. In fact, in our plan, he explained, Israel will have permanent overriding security authority over all of Judea and Samaria, even after a peace agreement is concluded.

Friedman then turned to the nature of the agreement the Trump administration seeks to conclude.

The Palestinians have four years, he explained, to agree to the President’s plan. To reach a deal they have to agree to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. They have to accept Israeli control over the airspace and the electromagnetic spectrum. They have agree to a demilitarized state and accept that there will be no Palestinian immigration to Israel from abroad. They have to agree to Israeli sovereignty over the border with Jordan. They have to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and demilitarize Gaza.

If they do that, we will recognize them as a state and they will receive the rest of Area C.

What if they don’t agree to those terms? I asked.

If they don’t agree, he replied, then at the end of four years, Israel will no longer be bound by the terms of the deal and will be free to apply its law to all areas it requires.

You’re telling me that in four years we’ll be able to apply Israeli law on the rest of the territory? I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

Yes, that’s right.

My heart started thumping like a rabbit tail.

You mean the Palestinians lose if they don’t agree to peace? Does President Trump support this? I asked in stunned disbelief.

Yes, of course, he supports this. It’s his plan, after all, Friedman said, smiling and a bit surprised at my reaction.

Boom.

Unannounced, tears began flowing out of my eyes.

Are those tears of happiness or sadness, Friedman asked, concerned.

For several moments, I couldn’t speak. Finally, I said, I feel like I need to take off my shoes. I’m witnessing a miracle.

Shortly thereafter, after thanking him and wishing him well, (and washing my face), I left his home, got in my car and drove to the Kotel.

As I listened to his briefing, there in his study, I didn’t feel like I was alone. There with me were fifty generations of Jews in every corner of the globe mouthing the Psalmist’s verses, “And the nations of the world will say, God has greatly blessed them; God has greatly blessed us, we were like dreamers.”

And closely, more immediately, as I sat there listening, I felt 27 years of worry and frustration washing away. The 27-year Oslo nightmare was over. The blood libel that blamed Israel for the Palestinians’ war against it was rejected by the greatest nation in the world, finally.

When you read the Trump plan closely, you realize it is a mirror image of Oslo. Rather than Israel being required to prove its good will, the Palestinians are required to prove their commitment to peace.

Consider the issue of releasing Palestinian terrorists.

Like the Oslo deal and its derivatives, the Trump deal includes a section on releasing terrorists. But whereas under Oslo rules, Israel was supposed to release terrorists as a confidence building measure to facilitate the opening of negotiations, under the Trump deal the order is reversed.

 Israel is expected to release terrorists only after the Palestinians have returned all of the Israeli prisoners and MIAs and only after a peace deal has been signed.

Whereas Israel was required under Oslo to release murderers, the Trump deal states explicitly that Israel will not release murderers or accessories to murder.

One of the PLO’s more appalling demands was that Israel release Arab Israel citizens convicted of terrorism charges. The subversive demand implied PLO jurisdiction over Arab Israelis. Israel strenuously objected, but all previous US administrations supported the PLO demand.

The Trump deal states explicitly that Israeli citizens will not be released in any future release of terrorists.

There are many problematic aspects to the Trump plan. For instance, it calls for Israel to transfer sovereign territory along the Gaza border to Palestinian control in the framework of the peace deal.

More immediately, the deal requires Israel to suspend building activities in the parts of Area C earmarked for the Palestinians in a future deal for the next four years. This requirement will pose a major burden to the Israeli communities adjacent to these areas. To develop, these communities require surrounding infrastructure – roads, sewage, and other systems – to develop with them.

On the other hand, the Trump plan places no restriction on construction inside of the Israeli communities. Residents of Shilo and Ariel will have the same property rights as residents of Tel Aviv and Beit Shean.

This then brings us to Israel and the leaders who accepted the Oslo rules for the past 27 years. The Trump plan is a test for Israel. Have we become addicted to the blood libel?

Will Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keep his word and present a decision to apply Israeli law over the Jordan Valley and the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria at the next government meeting or will he lose his nerve and hide behind “technical” issues?

Will Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party agree to abandon the Oslo blood libel most of its members embrace, and accept that Israel is capable of asserting its sovereign rights to these areas? Or will they hide behind the legal fraternity braying for Netanyahu’s head and preserve the anti-Semitic Oslo paradigm for their friends in the Democratic Party?

And will the legal fraternity, led by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit act in accordance with the law, which empowers the government to determine national policies even before elections? Or will it continue to make up laws to block government action and so render the March 2 poll a referendum between democracy and Zionism and the legal fraternity and post-Zionism?

Under Oslo, Israel had no interest in taking the initiative. Every “step forward” was a set-up. Tuesday Trump ended the 27-year nightmare. Oslo is the past. Sovereignty is now. We were like dreamers.

The time has now come to give thanks for the miracle and get on with building our land.

January 31, 2020 | 12 Comments »

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12 Comments / 12 Comments

  1. @ Josephus:
    Then there’s Numbers 24:18: “Edom will be conquered; Seir, his enemy, will be conquered, but Israel will grow strong.”‘ And, where is Mt. Seir today? Well, it seems to refer to a few possible places. In what is today, Jordan. No wait, there’s one that Wikipedia describes as: “There is also another Seir mountain near Hebron which, according to Joshua 15:10, was allotted to the tribe of Judah, near the modern town of Sa’ir in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories.” Got that? Allocated to the tribe of Judah! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Seir

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Seir

  2. One problem is that Kushner & Co are inviting Abbas & Co to make counter offers and/or changes to their plan.
    That is bullshit. I will endorse a plan after the ink has dried, thanx.

  3. @ Josephus:
    Forgot the most important one. Exodus 23:31:
    31 “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea[a] to the Mediterranean Sea,[b] and from the desert to the Euphrates River. I will give into your hands the people who live in the land, and you will drive them out before you.”

  4. @ Josephus:
    You can cherry pick and find anything you like in there to support a position. How about Deuteronomy 20:10-19, Numbers 33:55, Numbers 31. Deuteronomy 25:17-19, Ezra 4. Also, the Esau story doesn’t apply. Jacob and Esau were brothers. The Arabs are the descendants of invaders and illegal aliens who came during the mandate period. They are unrelated other than through Mohammad plagiarizing the Jewish scriptures and inserting the Arabs in there retrospectively.

  5. Duh! A M/E Peace Plan was never complicated.

    ISRAEL’S BORDERS – UNIQUE COMMAND NOT TO OCCUPY ANOTHER’S PEOPLES’ LAND, NOT EVEN A CUBIT ON ISRAEL’S AMMEDIATE BORDERS:
    Duet 2/4 And command thou the people, saying: Ye are to pass through the border of your brethren the children of Esau, that dwell in Seir; and they will be afraid of you; take ye good heed unto yourselves therefore; 5 contend not with them; for I will not give you of their land, no, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread on; because I have given mount Seir unto Esau for a possession.

  6. @ Michael Maguire:
    Oh, I forgot that the Jewish Agency for Palestine accepted the UN Partition Plan of 1947 where the future Arab state got all the heights (better to shoot from, I guess), and the future Jewish state got all the former malaria sites and the desert. I don’t remember who of the Israeli officials after looking at the map of the partition called the Jewish state shown on it “three sausages”.

  7. In the paragraph ‘the sodomites have 4 year’s ‘ Friedman forgot the sale of the yellow brick road leading to the Brooklyn bridge which crosses over neather land.

  8. @ Michael Maguire:
    The Mandate for Palestine 1922 plays NO role in all the subsequent negotiations you have mentioned. If it did, everyone would agree that the Jews are fully entitled to the 22% of the original Mandate that they ended up with after all the British machinations to deprive them of their “National Home”, and there would be NO subsequent “peace processes” whatsoever. All these “peace processes” are designed to show that the process of Arab state formation is not complete (because Israel “occupied” Arab land and is now in the position of a beggar), and that the Arabs are entitled to 1/2 (al least) of the territory that lies within the boundaries of the Biblical Israel. It is clear what the ultimate aim of this is.
    I am including here my comment on the topic from a different link:

    After the Ottoman Empire fell apart, the British decided to chop of the greatest part of it for themselves. The British Mandate to establish “national home for the Jewish people” was the greatest tool to achieve this. There was also the French Mandate of which Lawrence of Arabia said “We are going to push the French out of the Middle East” (later on, he put it much more rudely).
    The British succeeded in pushing out the French but with the Jews the “pushing out” proved to be much more difficult. First, they chopped off 78% of the Mandate (using an ambiguous sentence in the agreement) to create Jordan and Iraq, then they tried to make the life of the Palestinian Jews hell on the remaining 22% of the territory while bringing in as many Arabs as possible. In 1939 they decided to prevent the European Jews from moving to their future “national home” so most of them would perish in Europe.
    What I don’t understand is why Israel keeps playing the “peace process” game the sole purpose of which is to squeeze the Jewish population out of the remaining 22% of the Mandatory area?
    Why don’t they just stand up in the UN, say there publicly what I have written here, and request to be left alone on their 22% half of which is desert anyway (the Arabs can move next door to Jordan)?
    If this “peace process” game continues, the Arabs will be getting more and more land piecemeal, the terror will never stop, and everyone can imagine what will happen next.
    All those “peace processes” and “painful concessions” (only by Israel) are a slow Jewish suicide (or murder, or both).

  9. What part does the Mandate for Palestine 1922 play in all these plans put forward by successive foreign governments and meekly accepted and rejoiced over by the Israeli leadership?
    Would it have made the slightest bit of difference to Israel’s position today if the San Remo negotiations had never happened in 1920 and the League of Nations had never issued the Mandate for Palestine guaranteeing ALL the territory between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea as the Jewish National Homeland?