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Ten Years After Oslo - Three Views

(JTA) Dore Gold - After 10 years it’s clear that the failure to reach an Israeli-Palestinian agreement cannot be attributed to a lack of political will on the Israeli side. Rather, it has to do with the more fundamental question of whether the leadership of the PLO really was prepared for reconciliation and peace with Israel. The overwhelming evidence is that the PLO leadership viewed the Oslo process as a tactical necessity to realize its ultimate strategic goal of "Palestine from the river to the sea” - including Israel. The problem is deeper than Arafat. On two occasions in 2001, Faisal Husseini confessed that the Oslo agreements were nothing more than a "Trojan Horse" for realizing the eventual eradication of Israel. West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti told the New Yorker that even if Israel withdrew from 100% of the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not end. Why did the Israeli and U.S. governments invest so much in the Oslo process if it was so clear that the PLO had no intention of making peace? Didn’t they consult with their intelligence establishments? Henry Kissinger warned in his book, Diplomacy: “What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.” Governments must allow their intelligence communities the freedom to express themselves and promote intellectual pluralism if disasters in the Middle East are to be avoided.
2003-09-09 00:00:00
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