10 sept 2018
A few days ago, Saeb Erekat, the PLO Executive Committee Secretary, revealed the fundamental mistake in the Oslo agreement signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993, 25 years after it was signed. He said that “the fundamental mistake in the agreement was the lack of mutual recognition.”
He added that “Israel continues to occupy the majority of the Palestinian territories and continues to expand settlement and to impose dictates and siege,” which raises a serious question regarding committing the mistake of signing the Oslo agreement in itself or just the lack of mutual recognition. Erekat defended that the mistake was not the signing of the agreement itself, but the lack of mutual recognition.
Erekat said: “At the time, we asked for an Israeli recognition of the Palestinian state, but the Israelis rejected, and that was the main mistake.” He called for the suspension of recognition of Israel until it recognizes the Palestinian state as stated in the resolutions of the Central Council of the PLO.
The most dangerous stage
“Oslo led us to an advanced stage of danger, making the Palestinian issue looks as if it is lost and liquidated,” said political analyst Zulfikar Sawerjo, indicating that the agreement met the main objectives of the Zionist occupation.
Speaking to the Palestinian Information Center, Sawerjo said that the Oslo agreement was dangerous, but the real danger was that it lacked articles to stop the settlements and to recognize the Palestinian state by Israel.
“Twenty five years after the signing of the agreement, Israel continues to build settlements on large parts of the West Bank and it thwarted the two-state solution,” he said. “The agreement was the main objective of the occupation to liquidate the Palestinian cause and to bring it to this dangerous juncture.”
The other article it lacked, says Sawerjo, is the mutual recognition. “This deprived us of the right to be recognized as a state and to neutralize major issues such as Jerusalem, refugees and others,” he added.
He stressed that the agreement seems to have been aimed at what we have reached now, the so-called Deal of the Century and the elimination of the Palestinian issue and turning it into a humanitarian issue. “This means adopting a frame of an expanded autonomy, which the Palestinians previously had rejected, but it seems that we fell in a trap that is not easy to get out of,” he said.
Sawerjo, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP, published a poll calling for a vote between resistance and negotiations as a solution to Palestinian issue 25 years after the signing of the Oslo agreement. Some 70% of respondents voted in favor of resistance while 30% voted for negotiations.
Lack of political solution
Political analyst Iyad Al-Qara, confirms that the worst thing the PLO did in the Oslo Accords was the lack of any political or national options, which made it hostage to the political will and the goals that Israel was seeking to achieve, the most important of which was the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.
“Going to Oslo was an attempt by the PLO to find a way out of its internal challenges as well as with regard to its regional relations. I found that some Arabs then traded on the Palestinian issue. The organization was part of this trade. The PLO went towards the Israeli occupation and it was trapped there,” Qara told the Palestinian Information Center.
He adds, “The Palestinian people are still paying a much greater price than the crisis they were experiencing before the signing of the Oslo Accords.” He points out that the most dangerous outcome of what the PLO have done in Oslo is that the Arabs started considering that the Palestinians’ engagement in negotiations with the occupation is a ploy for not interfering or sometimes identifying with Israeli positions.
“The world is convinced that there is a strong authority that governs the Palestinians and represents them, and this authority enjoys a positive relationship with Israel and can solve any problems here or there,” he said.
End of illusion
Academic and political analyst Ibrahim Habib described what is happening as “the end of the illusion project,” which lasted for 25 years, indicating that the goal was to stop the resistance and the Intifada and restrain the Palestinian people.
“Unfortunately, we have reached the end of the illusion project that they have marketed to us as a national project. It turned out to be a false effort that required stopping the resistance and the First Intifada, in order to create facts on the ground, and to end any form of Palestinian patriotism,” he continued as saying.
The Palestinian academic agrees with his predecessors that a fundamental goal behind the Oslo agreement was to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Habib explains that what we are witnessing today is an awakening that is becoming apparent to everyone about the project that was put in place 25 years ago. It was clear that the leadership of the PLO and the PA were deceiving the masses and are now trying to create new paths to complete the liquidation process of the Palestinian cause.
He added that “Israel continues to occupy the majority of the Palestinian territories and continues to expand settlement and to impose dictates and siege,” which raises a serious question regarding committing the mistake of signing the Oslo agreement in itself or just the lack of mutual recognition. Erekat defended that the mistake was not the signing of the agreement itself, but the lack of mutual recognition.
Erekat said: “At the time, we asked for an Israeli recognition of the Palestinian state, but the Israelis rejected, and that was the main mistake.” He called for the suspension of recognition of Israel until it recognizes the Palestinian state as stated in the resolutions of the Central Council of the PLO.
The most dangerous stage
“Oslo led us to an advanced stage of danger, making the Palestinian issue looks as if it is lost and liquidated,” said political analyst Zulfikar Sawerjo, indicating that the agreement met the main objectives of the Zionist occupation.
Speaking to the Palestinian Information Center, Sawerjo said that the Oslo agreement was dangerous, but the real danger was that it lacked articles to stop the settlements and to recognize the Palestinian state by Israel.
“Twenty five years after the signing of the agreement, Israel continues to build settlements on large parts of the West Bank and it thwarted the two-state solution,” he said. “The agreement was the main objective of the occupation to liquidate the Palestinian cause and to bring it to this dangerous juncture.”
The other article it lacked, says Sawerjo, is the mutual recognition. “This deprived us of the right to be recognized as a state and to neutralize major issues such as Jerusalem, refugees and others,” he added.
He stressed that the agreement seems to have been aimed at what we have reached now, the so-called Deal of the Century and the elimination of the Palestinian issue and turning it into a humanitarian issue. “This means adopting a frame of an expanded autonomy, which the Palestinians previously had rejected, but it seems that we fell in a trap that is not easy to get out of,” he said.
Sawerjo, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP, published a poll calling for a vote between resistance and negotiations as a solution to Palestinian issue 25 years after the signing of the Oslo agreement. Some 70% of respondents voted in favor of resistance while 30% voted for negotiations.
Lack of political solution
Political analyst Iyad Al-Qara, confirms that the worst thing the PLO did in the Oslo Accords was the lack of any political or national options, which made it hostage to the political will and the goals that Israel was seeking to achieve, the most important of which was the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.
“Going to Oslo was an attempt by the PLO to find a way out of its internal challenges as well as with regard to its regional relations. I found that some Arabs then traded on the Palestinian issue. The organization was part of this trade. The PLO went towards the Israeli occupation and it was trapped there,” Qara told the Palestinian Information Center.
He adds, “The Palestinian people are still paying a much greater price than the crisis they were experiencing before the signing of the Oslo Accords.” He points out that the most dangerous outcome of what the PLO have done in Oslo is that the Arabs started considering that the Palestinians’ engagement in negotiations with the occupation is a ploy for not interfering or sometimes identifying with Israeli positions.
“The world is convinced that there is a strong authority that governs the Palestinians and represents them, and this authority enjoys a positive relationship with Israel and can solve any problems here or there,” he said.
End of illusion
Academic and political analyst Ibrahim Habib described what is happening as “the end of the illusion project,” which lasted for 25 years, indicating that the goal was to stop the resistance and the Intifada and restrain the Palestinian people.
“Unfortunately, we have reached the end of the illusion project that they have marketed to us as a national project. It turned out to be a false effort that required stopping the resistance and the First Intifada, in order to create facts on the ground, and to end any form of Palestinian patriotism,” he continued as saying.
The Palestinian academic agrees with his predecessors that a fundamental goal behind the Oslo agreement was to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Habib explains that what we are witnessing today is an awakening that is becoming apparent to everyone about the project that was put in place 25 years ago. It was clear that the leadership of the PLO and the PA were deceiving the masses and are now trying to create new paths to complete the liquidation process of the Palestinian cause.
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Hamas leader Raafat Murra on Monday said that Oslo Accords gave the Israeli occupation all it needed and achieved all of its strategic goals.
In a press statement on the 25th anniversary of the signing of Oslo Accords, Murra said that Israel has exploited the Palestinian Authority's recognition of its existence and stepped up its settlement projects and attacks on Palestinians. Murra stressed that security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has turned the latter into a servant that works against the interests of the Palestinian people. Hamas leader pointed out that the Palestinian people at home and abroad are completely against the Oslo Accords and its disastrous consequences. Murra continued to say that Oslo Accords and the negotiations approach, which encouraged Israel to tighten its grip on the Palestinian territories, are a major cause of the emergence of the Deal of the Century and subsequent US decisions targeting Jerusalem and the refugees issue. He stressed that what is urgently needed is serious Palestinian actions that include supporting resistance, halting security coordination, building a solid internal front, and ending the unjust sanctions on besieged Gaza. |
5 aug 2018
Israeli navy ships attacked, Sunday, several fishing boats in Palestinian territorial waters along the coastal line in northern Gaza.
The WAFA Palestinian News Agency said the navy fired many live rounds at the boats, and sprayed them with water cannons, forcing the fishermen back to shore.
Earlier Sunday, the navy fired many live rounds at Palestinian fishing boats in central Gaza, also forcing the fishermen to sail back to shore, in fear of further Israeli violations.
Last month, Israeli unilaterally decreased the fishing zone to the fishermen in Gaza from six to three nautical miles, also until further notice.
In late February of this year, the navy killed a Palestinian fisherman, identified as Ismael Saleh Abu Ryala, 18, from Shati’ refugee camp, west of Gaza city.
There are more than 4000 fishers and around 700 boats in the Gaza Strip providing livelihood to dozens of at least 70.000 Palestinians, while the Israeli military and navy keep attacking them, kidnapping them and confiscating their boats, in addition to the dozens of casualties, including fatalities, resulting from these violations.
It is worth mentioning that, under the Oslo Peace Agreement, signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, the fishing zone was set at twenty nautical miles, where the Palestinians are supposed to be able to fish and sail, but Israel kept violating the agreement.
The WAFA Palestinian News Agency said the navy fired many live rounds at the boats, and sprayed them with water cannons, forcing the fishermen back to shore.
Earlier Sunday, the navy fired many live rounds at Palestinian fishing boats in central Gaza, also forcing the fishermen to sail back to shore, in fear of further Israeli violations.
Last month, Israeli unilaterally decreased the fishing zone to the fishermen in Gaza from six to three nautical miles, also until further notice.
In late February of this year, the navy killed a Palestinian fisherman, identified as Ismael Saleh Abu Ryala, 18, from Shati’ refugee camp, west of Gaza city.
There are more than 4000 fishers and around 700 boats in the Gaza Strip providing livelihood to dozens of at least 70.000 Palestinians, while the Israeli military and navy keep attacking them, kidnapping them and confiscating their boats, in addition to the dozens of casualties, including fatalities, resulting from these violations.
It is worth mentioning that, under the Oslo Peace Agreement, signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, the fishing zone was set at twenty nautical miles, where the Palestinians are supposed to be able to fish and sail, but Israel kept violating the agreement.
23 sept 2017
By Ramona Wadi
The Oslo Accords have resulted in a series of compromises, each one exacerbating the harm done to the Palestinians and undermining seriously important matters, such as the refugees’ right of return. Instead of advocating for decolonisation, the accords have produced decades of futile rhetoric about a “two-state solution” and wasted much of the Palestinians’ valuable time. At the other end of the spectrum, however, the Israelis have exploited the time-wasting “negotiations” to facilitate its colonial expansion on a daily basis.
Ahead of a meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, prior to addressing the UN General Assembly, senior Abbas advisor Nabil Shaath declared that it would be “utterly ridiculous” if Trump failed to commit himself to the two-state imposition. According to the Times of Israel, Shaath also expressed the opinion that scant results are expected from the forthcoming meeting: “I don’t know if Mr. Trump has much to say. Already his delegation that was here, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Greenblatt, have requested a waiting period of three to four months before Mr Trump is ready with a formulation to get the peace process started.”
The fact that Palestine is always discussed, even by Palestinian leaders, from a position of inferiority, shackles any potential for alternative thought and action. PA leaders are quick to describe as political drawbacks such waiting periods requested by the US or imposed upon Palestine by the international community. Yet the PA’s willingness to accept such delays has turned them into a permanent farce which demonstrates the irresponsibility of the main diplomatic actors.
For Israel, the US and the international community, these periods of alleged inaction serve as time for planning and executing further oppression in the form of settlement expansion, house demolitions and other punitive measures. It also includes curbs on the development of Palestinian society by targeting education premises, for example, as happened at the beginning of the new academic year recently.
Palestinian leaders, on the other hand, have been busy with crippling Gaza into political submission with another attempt at reconciliation. Although described as the means towards ending Palestinian disunity, this could have severe repercussions if the aim is to eliminate the remaining strands of resistance to the Israeli occupation. Achieving this aim under such cruel circumstances as besieging and persecuting Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively is neither a cause for celebration nor an exercise in pragmatism.
The PA is reflecting what the international community has been imposing upon Palestinians politically. Shaath’s comments indicate there is no will on behalf of the PA other than to persist with the two-state paradigm even though it has been declared obsolete by most sensible analysts. For the US and the international community, complying with such demands is not problematic, given the present acquiescence to the downward spiral started by the Oslo Accords.
If Trump fails to “commit” to the two-state compromise, the waiting period will be used as a metaphor of complaint and compliance. It there is explicit mention of the imposition, though, the PA might celebrate what it would call a victory. In reality, it is spiralling towards destruction even as it claims victory in the farce that is Palestinian reconciliation. Such are the consequences of Oslo, for which the full price has still to be paid by Palestine and its people.
The Oslo Accords have resulted in a series of compromises, each one exacerbating the harm done to the Palestinians and undermining seriously important matters, such as the refugees’ right of return. Instead of advocating for decolonisation, the accords have produced decades of futile rhetoric about a “two-state solution” and wasted much of the Palestinians’ valuable time. At the other end of the spectrum, however, the Israelis have exploited the time-wasting “negotiations” to facilitate its colonial expansion on a daily basis.
Ahead of a meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, prior to addressing the UN General Assembly, senior Abbas advisor Nabil Shaath declared that it would be “utterly ridiculous” if Trump failed to commit himself to the two-state imposition. According to the Times of Israel, Shaath also expressed the opinion that scant results are expected from the forthcoming meeting: “I don’t know if Mr. Trump has much to say. Already his delegation that was here, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Greenblatt, have requested a waiting period of three to four months before Mr Trump is ready with a formulation to get the peace process started.”
The fact that Palestine is always discussed, even by Palestinian leaders, from a position of inferiority, shackles any potential for alternative thought and action. PA leaders are quick to describe as political drawbacks such waiting periods requested by the US or imposed upon Palestine by the international community. Yet the PA’s willingness to accept such delays has turned them into a permanent farce which demonstrates the irresponsibility of the main diplomatic actors.
For Israel, the US and the international community, these periods of alleged inaction serve as time for planning and executing further oppression in the form of settlement expansion, house demolitions and other punitive measures. It also includes curbs on the development of Palestinian society by targeting education premises, for example, as happened at the beginning of the new academic year recently.
Palestinian leaders, on the other hand, have been busy with crippling Gaza into political submission with another attempt at reconciliation. Although described as the means towards ending Palestinian disunity, this could have severe repercussions if the aim is to eliminate the remaining strands of resistance to the Israeli occupation. Achieving this aim under such cruel circumstances as besieging and persecuting Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank respectively is neither a cause for celebration nor an exercise in pragmatism.
The PA is reflecting what the international community has been imposing upon Palestinians politically. Shaath’s comments indicate there is no will on behalf of the PA other than to persist with the two-state paradigm even though it has been declared obsolete by most sensible analysts. For the US and the international community, complying with such demands is not problematic, given the present acquiescence to the downward spiral started by the Oslo Accords.
If Trump fails to “commit” to the two-state compromise, the waiting period will be used as a metaphor of complaint and compliance. It there is explicit mention of the imposition, though, the PA might celebrate what it would call a victory. In reality, it is spiralling towards destruction even as it claims victory in the farce that is Palestinian reconciliation. Such are the consequences of Oslo, for which the full price has still to be paid by Palestine and its people.
16 sept 2017
By Motasem Dalloul
On 13 September 1993 the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, or what has commonly become known as the Oslo Accords.
This, according to UN documents, aimed to establish the general guidelines for negotiations between the PLO and Israel, lay the foundations for a Palestinian interim self-government in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period of five years and lays the basis for permanent status talks based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.
Twenty-four years after the announcement of this agreement – which should have achieved at least some gains for the Palestinians, including peace, security, economic growth and a final settlement – the Palestinians instead have been moving from one big loss to another, starting from the shrinking of their proposed homeland, to the loss of security and safety and ending with economic hardships and movement restrictions which have made their life unbearable.
Meanwhile, the co-sponsors of this notorious agreement, mainly the United States which hosted the signature ceremony of the agreement, has done nothing except take the side of the Israeli occupation, showering it with dollars, doubling all forms of support and sending the most recent and developed weapons, hundreds of tonnes of which were dropped on the heads of Palestinians in Gaza between 2006 and 2014.
The parties and the sponsors of the agreement agreed to solve the Palestinian issue based on the UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which is a reconfirmation of 242. This resolution stipulates the withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in 1967, which are the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula.
However, all of the aforementioned areas are still occupied by Israel except the Sinai Peninsula, which was handed back after a separate peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s. In addition, the Israeli grip over the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip has increased.
Briefly, in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel has planted hundreds of military checkpoints, expanded illegal settlements that have eaten up large swathes of Palestinian farms and residential areas, built an illegal separation wall that divides the occupied West Bank into small cantons, evicted Palestinians from their homes and handed them to Israeli settlers under weak pretexts. Israeli authorities have demolished thousands of homes under the pretext that they lack building licenses and increased the number of settlers from 105,000 in 1993 to more than 765,000 at the end of 2015.
Israel dismantled illegal settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under the pressure of the primitive homemade rockets that showered over them for a couple of years. However, Gaza remains under the full control of the Israeli occupation, which has imposed a strict siege on the coastal enclave since the victory of Hamas in the 2006 elections.
The Israeli siege has made Gaza “unliveable” and the sponsors of the Oslo Agreement have done nothing. Gaza came under four major offensives between 2006 and 2015 that claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinian civilians, wounded tens of thousands others, devastated infrastructure, paralysed hospitals, destroyed schools and universities and made Gaza’s children unable to “sleep, study or play,” Save the Children said, mainly due to the electricity and environmental crises.
Moreover, the area of the Gaza Strip has shrunk from 362km2 in 1994 to 275km2 in 2005. Israel occupied this land and made it no-man’s land.
The UN Security Council resolution which the Oslo Agreement is based on guarantees freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area, however, Palestinians are not only prevented from navigating through these international waterways, but prevented from sailing more than six and sometimes nine nautical miles for fishing.
Article V of the agreement stipulates that Palestinians collect taxes directly, however, it is actually Israel who is collecting the taxes, deducting administrative fees and transferring them to Palestinians. Tax money has been used by Israel to exploit the Palestinians as Israel will arbitrarily stop transferring it to cause a financial crisis to pressure Palestinians to conform to the Israeli agenda.
The parties and sponsors of Oslo agreed to implement interim self-governance arrangements and a framework to facilitate the negotiations for the final status issues by the end of 1999. However, more than two and half decades later the situation is deteriorating and no progress has been made.
Palestinian politicians from inside and outside the PLO have criticised the agreement, stressing it was an opportunity for Israel to expand its occupation. “Oslo was the greatest idea Israel ever had. It let them continue the occupation without paying any of the costs,” Secretary General of the left wing Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouti has said.
Taysir Khalid, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that Oslo and the following agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel “were catastrophic at all levels”.
The former US President Jimmy Carter, who engineered Israel and Egypt’s peace deal, said that he is “practically hopeless” that anything US President Donald Trump comes up with would be “justice to the Palestinians”. At the same time Israeli parties are discussing plans to annex Palestinians territories.
A UN report issued today says: “We are no closer to a sustainable solution that meets the needs and aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis alike… The absence of a political process for achieving the two-state solution remains a serious impediment to Palestine’s development.”
The question now is, what will Oslo bring for the Palestinians more than suffering?
- Motasem A Dalloul is MEMO’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip.
On 13 September 1993 the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, or what has commonly become known as the Oslo Accords.
This, according to UN documents, aimed to establish the general guidelines for negotiations between the PLO and Israel, lay the foundations for a Palestinian interim self-government in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period of five years and lays the basis for permanent status talks based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338.
Twenty-four years after the announcement of this agreement – which should have achieved at least some gains for the Palestinians, including peace, security, economic growth and a final settlement – the Palestinians instead have been moving from one big loss to another, starting from the shrinking of their proposed homeland, to the loss of security and safety and ending with economic hardships and movement restrictions which have made their life unbearable.
Meanwhile, the co-sponsors of this notorious agreement, mainly the United States which hosted the signature ceremony of the agreement, has done nothing except take the side of the Israeli occupation, showering it with dollars, doubling all forms of support and sending the most recent and developed weapons, hundreds of tonnes of which were dropped on the heads of Palestinians in Gaza between 2006 and 2014.
The parties and the sponsors of the agreement agreed to solve the Palestinian issue based on the UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which is a reconfirmation of 242. This resolution stipulates the withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in 1967, which are the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula.
However, all of the aforementioned areas are still occupied by Israel except the Sinai Peninsula, which was handed back after a separate peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s. In addition, the Israeli grip over the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip has increased.
Briefly, in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, Israel has planted hundreds of military checkpoints, expanded illegal settlements that have eaten up large swathes of Palestinian farms and residential areas, built an illegal separation wall that divides the occupied West Bank into small cantons, evicted Palestinians from their homes and handed them to Israeli settlers under weak pretexts. Israeli authorities have demolished thousands of homes under the pretext that they lack building licenses and increased the number of settlers from 105,000 in 1993 to more than 765,000 at the end of 2015.
Israel dismantled illegal settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under the pressure of the primitive homemade rockets that showered over them for a couple of years. However, Gaza remains under the full control of the Israeli occupation, which has imposed a strict siege on the coastal enclave since the victory of Hamas in the 2006 elections.
The Israeli siege has made Gaza “unliveable” and the sponsors of the Oslo Agreement have done nothing. Gaza came under four major offensives between 2006 and 2015 that claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinian civilians, wounded tens of thousands others, devastated infrastructure, paralysed hospitals, destroyed schools and universities and made Gaza’s children unable to “sleep, study or play,” Save the Children said, mainly due to the electricity and environmental crises.
Moreover, the area of the Gaza Strip has shrunk from 362km2 in 1994 to 275km2 in 2005. Israel occupied this land and made it no-man’s land.
The UN Security Council resolution which the Oslo Agreement is based on guarantees freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area, however, Palestinians are not only prevented from navigating through these international waterways, but prevented from sailing more than six and sometimes nine nautical miles for fishing.
Article V of the agreement stipulates that Palestinians collect taxes directly, however, it is actually Israel who is collecting the taxes, deducting administrative fees and transferring them to Palestinians. Tax money has been used by Israel to exploit the Palestinians as Israel will arbitrarily stop transferring it to cause a financial crisis to pressure Palestinians to conform to the Israeli agenda.
The parties and sponsors of Oslo agreed to implement interim self-governance arrangements and a framework to facilitate the negotiations for the final status issues by the end of 1999. However, more than two and half decades later the situation is deteriorating and no progress has been made.
Palestinian politicians from inside and outside the PLO have criticised the agreement, stressing it was an opportunity for Israel to expand its occupation. “Oslo was the greatest idea Israel ever had. It let them continue the occupation without paying any of the costs,” Secretary General of the left wing Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouti has said.
Taysir Khalid, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that Oslo and the following agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel “were catastrophic at all levels”.
The former US President Jimmy Carter, who engineered Israel and Egypt’s peace deal, said that he is “practically hopeless” that anything US President Donald Trump comes up with would be “justice to the Palestinians”. At the same time Israeli parties are discussing plans to annex Palestinians territories.
A UN report issued today says: “We are no closer to a sustainable solution that meets the needs and aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis alike… The absence of a political process for achieving the two-state solution remains a serious impediment to Palestine’s development.”
The question now is, what will Oslo bring for the Palestinians more than suffering?
- Motasem A Dalloul is MEMO’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip.
20 oct 2016
Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week published minutes of a secret meeting between then-Israeli premier Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres, who was head of the opposition at the time. The discussions took place on 31 August 1978, ahead of Begin’s talks with Egypt’s leader Anwar Sadat at Camp David, the US presidential retreat.
For Haaretz, the minutes “lay bare the hawk that peacemaker Peres once was”. In fact, the document gives a valuable insight into what shaped Peres’s world view to the very end: settler colonial racism.
What is most instructive about comparing the Peres of 1978 to the Peres of, say, the 1993 Oslo Accords, is not what changed – which was an issue of strategy – but what remained consistent: his overarching motivation. Let’s take each in turn.
Much changed - but much didn't
First, what changed. As the minutes show, the Shimon Peres who proudly helped found the first illegal settlements in the West Bank believed “that Jordan is also Palestine,” adding: “I’m against… another Palestinian country, against an Arafat state.”
Yet fast forward a mere 15 years, and Peres is signing on the dotted line to create that very same “Arafat state". It's a choice of wording that, in hindsight, is ironically prescient about the permanently interim Palestinian Authority established with Israel’s blessing.
He went on: “We’ll reach 1.8 million Arabs, and I see our situation as getting very difficult and not a matter of police or prison… I see them eating the Galilee and my heart bleeds.” Note how in 2005 he was still describing Palestinian citizens as a “demographic threat".
Peres added: “They live in houses in Afula and in Acre and they take over entire streets. The moshavim [rural collective communities] are full of Arab labourers, and Jews sitting in their houses and playing tennis and the Arabs are working in the fields. That doesn’t seem right to me.”
Thus Peres “the hawk” already believed that some kind of “partition” would be necessary because of that age-old Zionist problem: “What to do with the Arabs.” Peres “the dove” saw the Oslo peace process as the answer to the question that had bothered him years earlier.
Peres also told Begin their areas of common ground for any deal. “We don’t agree to return to the 1967 borders, Jerusalem must remain unified and the defence of Israel must begin from the Jordan River with an IDF presence in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”
And what did Yitzhak Rabin tell the Knesset, weeks before he was assassinated in 1995? That the Oslo Accords would produce “a Palestinian entity… which is less than a state". A “united” Jerusalem. Israel retaining major settlements. The Jordan river becoming a “security” border in the “broadest meaning".
The problem for the Zionist project
It is a shame that these minutes had not been published prior to his death and the avalanche of eulogies from the great and the good about this “man of peace". For the problem with the coverage of Peres’s life was not just a whitewashing of his record by the omission of specific atrocities (although that was all too common).
No, it was deeper than that. It was the portrayal of Peres the “founding father,” the “hawk turned dove,” the tireless advocate of peaceful compromise, reflecting a widely held mythology about the Oslo Accords, the “peace process” and Zionism (and especially liberal Zionism) more generally.
The declassified document shows how the Israeli right and left are united by the question of what to do with the Palestinians. Yes, the answers differ. But that the very existence of the Palestinian people is a problem at all for the Jewish state is a belief shared by so-called hawks and doves alike.
Today, there are some Israeli politicians who wish to formally annex all or some of the West Bank. Then there are those like present Zionist Union member Tzipi Livni, who, on his passing, declared that “Shimon Peres was my teacher". She has urged “partition” of the land as a solution to the problem of what to do with the Palestinians.
The journey that several Israeli politicians are perceived to have travelled – Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, even Ariel Sharon – is one of strategy, not ideology. Ultimately, none has seen the Palestinians as equal human beings. Instead they have been a problem for the Zionist project.
- Ben White is the author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide and Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy. He is a writer for Middle East Monitor, and his articles have been published by Al Jazeera, al-Araby, Huffington Post, The Electronic Intifada, The Guardian’s Comment is free, and more.
For Haaretz, the minutes “lay bare the hawk that peacemaker Peres once was”. In fact, the document gives a valuable insight into what shaped Peres’s world view to the very end: settler colonial racism.
What is most instructive about comparing the Peres of 1978 to the Peres of, say, the 1993 Oslo Accords, is not what changed – which was an issue of strategy – but what remained consistent: his overarching motivation. Let’s take each in turn.
Much changed - but much didn't
First, what changed. As the minutes show, the Shimon Peres who proudly helped found the first illegal settlements in the West Bank believed “that Jordan is also Palestine,” adding: “I’m against… another Palestinian country, against an Arafat state.”
Yet fast forward a mere 15 years, and Peres is signing on the dotted line to create that very same “Arafat state". It's a choice of wording that, in hindsight, is ironically prescient about the permanently interim Palestinian Authority established with Israel’s blessing.
He went on: “We’ll reach 1.8 million Arabs, and I see our situation as getting very difficult and not a matter of police or prison… I see them eating the Galilee and my heart bleeds.” Note how in 2005 he was still describing Palestinian citizens as a “demographic threat".
Peres added: “They live in houses in Afula and in Acre and they take over entire streets. The moshavim [rural collective communities] are full of Arab labourers, and Jews sitting in their houses and playing tennis and the Arabs are working in the fields. That doesn’t seem right to me.”
Thus Peres “the hawk” already believed that some kind of “partition” would be necessary because of that age-old Zionist problem: “What to do with the Arabs.” Peres “the dove” saw the Oslo peace process as the answer to the question that had bothered him years earlier.
Peres also told Begin their areas of common ground for any deal. “We don’t agree to return to the 1967 borders, Jerusalem must remain unified and the defence of Israel must begin from the Jordan River with an IDF presence in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”
And what did Yitzhak Rabin tell the Knesset, weeks before he was assassinated in 1995? That the Oslo Accords would produce “a Palestinian entity… which is less than a state". A “united” Jerusalem. Israel retaining major settlements. The Jordan river becoming a “security” border in the “broadest meaning".
The problem for the Zionist project
It is a shame that these minutes had not been published prior to his death and the avalanche of eulogies from the great and the good about this “man of peace". For the problem with the coverage of Peres’s life was not just a whitewashing of his record by the omission of specific atrocities (although that was all too common).
No, it was deeper than that. It was the portrayal of Peres the “founding father,” the “hawk turned dove,” the tireless advocate of peaceful compromise, reflecting a widely held mythology about the Oslo Accords, the “peace process” and Zionism (and especially liberal Zionism) more generally.
The declassified document shows how the Israeli right and left are united by the question of what to do with the Palestinians. Yes, the answers differ. But that the very existence of the Palestinian people is a problem at all for the Jewish state is a belief shared by so-called hawks and doves alike.
Today, there are some Israeli politicians who wish to formally annex all or some of the West Bank. Then there are those like present Zionist Union member Tzipi Livni, who, on his passing, declared that “Shimon Peres was my teacher". She has urged “partition” of the land as a solution to the problem of what to do with the Palestinians.
The journey that several Israeli politicians are perceived to have travelled – Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, even Ariel Sharon – is one of strategy, not ideology. Ultimately, none has seen the Palestinians as equal human beings. Instead they have been a problem for the Zionist project.
- Ben White is the author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide and Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy. He is a writer for Middle East Monitor, and his articles have been published by Al Jazeera, al-Araby, Huffington Post, The Electronic Intifada, The Guardian’s Comment is free, and more.
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