Oslo Accords at 25: Many negatives and a few positives
Despite the return of Palestinian leaders and the release of prisoners
and withdrawal from populated cities, the negatives have outweighed the
positives
Oslo also created a class aligned with the occupation and has further entrenched economic dependency on Israel
AMMAN: When the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
Yasser Arafat, and his deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, stepped foot on US soil in
September 1993, the PLO was considered a terrorist organization by the
US and Israel.
They had been invited by President Bill Clinton, along with Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, to
sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the PLO and Israel.
First Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of recognition of each other.
Once legitimized, the Sept. 13 ceremony at the White House Lawn began.
The famous handshake between Arafat and Rabin became the iconic image of
the ceremony. The MoU they signed became known as the Oslo Accords.
A number of sub-agreements later in Egypt’s Taba, and Wye River in the
US, the assassination of Rabin by a religious Jewish Israeli and the
collapse of the peace efforts have pushed many to say, as former
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad wrote in a Foreign Affairs
article, that “Oslo is Dead.”
Twenty-five years after that famous handshake, the majority of
Palestinians, as well as Israelis and international observers, find it
hard to see any worthwhile positives in what had been seen at the time
as a major breakthrough.
Hassan Asfour, a senior PLO negotiator who is now editor of an
opposition website in Cairo, told Arab News that Oslo did make a major
breakthrough that should not be ignored. “This was the first time that
Jewish Israeli officials were ever willing to stop the religious
expansionism that has become the hallmark of Zionism.”
Asfour, who along with Ahmad Krai (Abu Ala’a), was deeply involved in
the secret negotiations with Israel’s Uri Savir and Foreign Minister
Shimon Peres, said the breaking of this religious taboo was the main
reason for Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995.
“Rabin was killed by a religious Jew because he dared to give up what
Jews consider the heart of their country, what they call Judea and
Samaria.” Asfour, who since became negotiations minister and minister of
NGOs, resigned in 2005 and has publicly opposed Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas.
Hamadeh Faraneh, a member of the Palestine National Council in Jordan,
said that many forget the achievements of the Oslo Accords. “Oslo
wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the popular Palestinian
intifada that forced Rabin to partially respond to the national
aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Faraneh told Arab News.
“Oslo witnessed the Israeli and American recognition of the Palestinian
people, the PLO and the political rights of Palestinians.”
Faraneh also said that the Oslo Accords led to the partial Israeli
withdrawal from Gaza and West Bank cities and the return of 300,000
Palestinians, including top PLO officials and their families. The
creation of the Palestinian National Authority was an important step
toward the creation of an independent state.
Sam Bahour, an American Palestinian businessman who was among the many
who decided to return and invest in Palestine, argues that Oslo exposed
Israeli and US hypocrisy over their support for peace and Palestinian
statehood. He told Arab News, however, that it has contributed to
damaging the geographic integrity of the occupied Palestinian
territories, creating divisions without celebrating pluralism.
“Oslo also created a class aligned with the occupation and has further
entrenched economic dependency on Israel.” Many cited the division of
Palestinian territories to areas A, B and C as one of the biggest
concessions Palestinian negotiators made without securing even a freeze
of Jewish settlements.
Anees Swedian, head of the PLO’s international affairs department, told
Arab News that despite the return of Palestinian leaders and the release
of prisoners and withdrawal from populated cities, the negatives have
outweighed the positives. “All important issues were temporarily
postponed, a five-year period has now turned into decades. Palestinian
land is divided, and the Paris Economic Protocol has shackled the
Palestinian economy and made it dependant on Israel.”
The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, followed by the election of
right-wing Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu further complicated issues
and impeded progress in the talks. The failure of Camp David II,
followed by the second intifada, pushed progress further away and played
into the hands of the radicals on both sides. Hamas became more
powerful, and after Israel quit Gaza, Hamas took over, leaving the PLO
as a minimized entity, and surrounded by settlements and Israeli army
checkpoints.
Khaled Abu Arafeh, Palestinian minister for Jerusalem in the short-lived
2006 Ismail Haniyeh’s Hamas government, said that if left alone Hamas
could have stopped the Israeli expansionism. “The resistance led by
Hamas made the occupation costly and Oslo allowed back a leadership that
is not open to real political reform, internal reconciliation or
resistance to the occupation,” Abu Arafeh told Arab News.
Ibrahim Johar, a Palestinian writer based in Jerusalem, told Arab News
that the major Palestinian error was in trusting the Americans so much.
“What we see today ... has exposed the American hypocrisy and has shown
that our expectations that the US would stand up for justice and freedom
were misplaced.”
Ofer Zalzberg, a senior researcher with International Crisis Group, told
Arab News that both sides committed major violations, but even so that
in several fundamental ways the Oslo Accords are still very much alive:
The existence of the Palestinian Authority, its operations in the
Oslo-designated areas A and B, security coordination between Israelis
and Palestinians, the customs union and much more all stem from Oslo.
“Seeing that even the (right-wing religious) Jewish Home party’s Naftali
Bennett speaks of annexing the Oslo-designated Area C while keeping the
current PA-governed reality in areas A and B, and seeing that Hamas is
engaged in acquiring influence within the Oslo-made Palestinian
Authority rather than seeking to dismantle it, gives room to think the
former so far is, perhaps counterintuitively, arguably more likely. For
these to occur the PA will have to survive the pressures which the Trump
administration employs to implement its coercive diplomacy,” Zalzberg
told Arab News.
Hani Al-Masri, a former leftist ideologue with the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, who was able to return to Palestine as a
result of the Oslo Accords has set up Masarat, the Palestinian Center
for Policy Research and Strategic Studies, in Ramallah. In an analytical
piece on Oslo, Al-Masri argued that Palestinians need to work as if
there is no Oslo.
“Oslo failed, and it didn’t fail at the same time. It might have been
destined to fail from the beginning because it didn’t provide the
minimum needed to recognize the rights of the victims. Oslo didn’t fail
but was assassinated by successive Israeli governments who refused to
take responsibility for their continued crimes.”
Al-Masri added that a new national strategy that gives priority to
ending the division and the punishment for Gazans could lead to a new
Oslo. “What is needed is a new diverse and pluralistic leadership to be
an instrument in the hands of a unified and reformed PLO.”
Hassan Asfour, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, now editor of news website Amad, had a simpler solution.
“Forget about Oslo, which died in 1996. President Abbas should now go to
Gaza and declare the Palestinian state in Gaza, while insisting that
the West Bank, including Jerusalem, is an occupied territory that must
be turned over to a UN protectorate until it becomes independent.”
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