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The Oslo Accords: 20 Years Later

(Jerusalem Post) Tovah Lazaroff - Watching the famous Sept. 13, 1993, handshake on the White House lawn that marked the signing of the Oslo Accords, Dore Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN from 1997 to 1999, was concerned that the process had placed politics over security. "Rather than start with Israel's security requirements...and then construct a political settlement that would protect Israel's security, it worked in the exact opposite way - of first coming to a political agreement and then asking the army to break its head finding a solution," Gold said. On top of that, "You were taking an organization which was on your terrorist list, living in Tunisia, and which was on the losing side of history and you were planting it in Gaza and the West Bank." It raised obvious questions, he said. "Are you certain it has made a transformation? Are you really dealing with the Nelson Mandela of the Palestinians or with a movement that retained a fundamental reservation about Israel's existence?" asked Gold. As policy adviser to Netanyahu when he first became prime minister in 1996, Gold said he was privy to intelligence reports that showed that in 1997 Arafat gave the green light to terror attacks against Israel. That was followed by the more than 1,000 Israeli deaths in Palestinian terror attacks during the Second Intifada, which began in October 2000. "We have to reach peace with our Palestinian neighbors, but the diplomatic approach that you take is the $64,000 question. You want a peace process that is workable, not one that is doomed to fail." Yet until a permanent solution is found, he believes the Oslo Accords should be retained. "It became a document that allowed Israelis and Palestinians to manage their differences. I think it would be a mistake for Israel to renounce it," Gold said. Israel's former ambassador to Canada, Alan Baker, served as Israel's legal adviser on the Oslo Accords. He said that Oslo II grants legal standing to both the presence of the PA and Israel in the West Bank. "From the minute we [Israel] signed Oslo II in 1995, Israel's presence in the West Bank in Area C was with the agreement of the Palestinians," Baker said. Palestinian agreement to Israel's presence in Area C until a permanent agreement is reached means that Israel cannot be considered an occupying power, Baker said.
2013-09-20 00:00:00
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