Myth detection: Why Oslo failed
by Daniel Mandel, History News Network (with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater)
In a blog entry dedicated to the resuscitation of binationalism - the theory of a shared Jewish-Arab state, with the reality of Arab domination - Mark A. LeVine claims that the lion’s share for the failure of the Oslo peace process is “rooted in the inability of most Israelis, even the politicians behind the peace process, to pay the economic and territorial price for real Palestinian self-determination: a truly independent state, free of Jewish settlements, with full economic sovereignty and control of its resources.”
This claim is fanciful, as Saul Singer has demonstrated in detail. Pace LeVine, Oslo was doomed because Palestinians were unwilling to accept a peace agreement of any type that did not encompass Israel’s eventual elimination. That in turn is owed to the unreconstructed radicalism of the Arafat regime that the process tragically established and the irredentism of Palestinian opinion it deepened and entrenched.
Contrary to the oft-heard assertions of mere Bantustan’s offered by an Israeli government that had lost its nerve, the Oslo years were ones of Israeli flexibility, American diplomatic enthusiasm and (continuing) European largesse. Ample opportunity existed for the Arafat-Abbas Palestinian Authority (PA) to come to terms with Israelis, build a rule of law society and lay the foundation of a firm economy bolstered by the world’s highest per capita level of international aid.
Instead, the PA squandered it on building up militias and lining the pockets of officials from Arafat down. Terrorist groups commenced suicide bombing Israel while in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps, incitement to hatred and murder of Jews and glorification of terrorism as a religious and national duty became the order of the day. PA maps and atlases pretend Israel does not exist, PA-salaried clerics execrate Jews as inherently evil and call for their eradication, TV and radio video, popular songs and poetry extol the glories of suicide attacks, textbooks teach that Israel is a colonial usurper, unfit to live, and streets, colleges and youth camps are named for suicide bombers.
Oslo was a mistake because Palestinian goals were airbrushed from the equation by those Israelis who devised and implemented the process.
