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Oslo at 30 - a Personal Perspective

(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Ehud Yaari - My entire career has been spent in the no man's land between Israelis and Palestinians. As a junior assistant at Defense Minister Gen. Moshe Dayan's office in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, I was a witness to a still unpublicized and short-lived initiative by Mossad operatives to explore the prospects of promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state sponsored by Israel. Numerous conversations with local leaders, along with some businessmen and academics in the West Bank and Gaza, yielded an impression that Israel could prudently try to press forward in this direction. Yet by April 1968, Dayan decided to drop the experiment. He did not have confidence in the local leadership's ability to face both the radical Palestinian factions and President Nasser of Egypt's opposition. In 1993, news of the Oslo agreement broke and I began calling my PLO contacts in Tunis. Mahmoud Abbas told me that the seven brigades of Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Army would be deployed in the West Bank and Gaza during the first phase. Arafat was invited right from the start to impose full and exclusive control over the local Palestinian population. He was granted the armed forces, generous funding by international donors, and a free ticket to bring with him the PLO's culture of terror campaigns, corruption, and devotion to "liberate Palestine." On Sep. 13, I was broadcasting on the only TV channel in Israel at the time, covering the White House signing ceremony. After an Oval Office interview, President Clinton asked me why I was so skeptical. My answer was that I had not heard from Arafat what I had heard years before from Sadat: "No more war, no more bloodshed!" It was clear to me then that Arafat signed the Oslo accords to gain a foothold in the land. He had never considered a long-term compromise, giving up the "right of return" or the "armed struggle." For him, it was no more than an armistice for a limited period. The PA has become extremely unpopular among Palestinians and mainly operates as a patronage system to employ an ever-expanding public sector. The preservation of the PA as a potential partner for peace with Israel requires an ambitious reform, replacing the PLO old guard with true representatives of the local population. Only with new figures in leadership positions can the West Bank be prepared for whatever type of statehood with limited sovereignty may hopefully emerge from a potential fresh dialogue with Israel. As Prime Minister Rabin came to realize that the PLO was not the best counterpart, so should we now: the PLO has degenerated since Oslo and lost its strength. There are strong - though mostly silent - forces within Palestinian society who are disenchanted with "armed struggle" and who believe that cooperation with Israel is their preferred course. The writer, a fellow with the Washington Institute, is a veteran commentator for Israeli television.
2023-09-07 00:00:00
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