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Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/sagiv-steinberg/oslo-at-33-is-an-agreement-nobody-owns
Oslo Was Never Owned by the Palestinian Public
(JNS) Sagiv Steinberg - On Sept. 13, 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords' Declaration of Principles at the White House. Days before the ceremony, Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of mutual recognition. The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security and renounced terrorism. The killing was supposed to stop. It did not. On that day, Jordanian television aired a prerecorded Arabic address by PLO chief Yasser Arafat. He reminded his listeners that the Palestine National Council had resolved in 1974 to establish a national authority over any part of the land that Israel vacated in a phased plan to eventually take over the rest. Oslo, in his telling, was a stage in the struggle, not a substitute for it. Palestinians are scheduled to vote in November under rules requiring candidates to accept the PLO's commitments in Oslo. In a poll published Aug. 12 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 2/3 of Palestinians opposed requiring election candidates to accept the PLO's commitments, including its agreements with Israel. The frameworks now being assembled for Gaza rest on similar architecture. Yet agreements built on the Western model, in which a document creates obligations that outlast political changes, require something the Middle East has rarely supplied: A party able to carry out a commitment after the leader who made it is gone. The practical conclusion for Jerusalem and Washington is that the next agreement should be judged by what the public demonstrably accepts, and its security terms should be enforceable by Israel without depending on anyone's goodwill. The writer is CEO and director of communications at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.