The Oslo trapBy Ari Shavit (Haaretz 2/9/99)(Ari Shavit is a free thinker leftist journalist) What has been happening to Israel's Prime ministers in recent years is cause for concern. So much so, indeed, that it sometimes seems that the fate of the Jewish state's leaders at the end of the millennium resembles that of the Kennedy family. Consider: Within the space of less than four years one Israeli prime minister was assassinated, a second was shattered politically and a third suffered a humiliating defeat. And now, just when it seemed that the worst was behind us, just when it seemed that Israel could take wing, it emerges that a suffocating ring of sourness and disappointment is beginning to take its toll on a fourth prime minister, a man of acute intelligence and a glory-filled past. Yet his first diplomatic move, the results of which are supposed to be signed today, appears highly puzzling from start to finish and proves only that even Ehud Barak is already becoming entangled in the same political and diplomatic web in which his three predecessors were fatally ensnared. No black magic is involved here, no kabbalistic mumbo jumbo. Neither witchcraft nor curse has afflicted Israel's prime ministers in recent years. What has afflicted them is the profound duality of the peace process as it was shaped from 1993 to 1995. That duality is manifested in the fact that the process threatens to freeze any leader who tries to escape its clutches to death (see the case of Benjamin Netanyahu), while at the same time it threatens to consume in flames any leader who devotes himself to it (see the cases of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres). It is a duality that is expressed in a process that obliges the Israeli navigators to move full speed ahead on a route that has been marked out in advance, yet provides no guarantee that the route will not lead to the edge of a cliff. And it is a duality that, time after time, causes the process to demonstrate that it is (almost) inevitable even when it is (almost) impossible. Every new Israeli Prime Minister finds himself trapped in the same net in which his predecessors also fluttered helplessly. The source of the trap is this: Exactly six years ago, in August and September of 1993, the Rabin government made three colossal mistakes. The first mistake was the decision to recognize the Palestinian-Arab people, its legitimate rights in this land and its national movement, without obtaining recognition of the parallel rights of the Jewish-Israeli people in return. The second mistake was the decision to give the Palestine Liberation Organization control over most of the occupied territories before negotiations over a permanent settlement had begun and before the PLO conceded so much as one inch of the soil of Palestine. And the third mistake was the "hypothetical" message that Yitzhak Rabin conveyed to Hafez Assad in August 1993 - a message that gave the Syrians the impression That Israel had agreed to withdraw to the boundary lines of June 4, 1967. The cumulative result of these three structural mistakes, which Occurred within the space of just a few weeks at the end of the summer of 1993, Was devastating. What happened was that when the peace process finally got underway, it had a congenital defect. The process places Israel in the permanent and inferior position of a debtor whose creditor-neighbors keep pounding relentlessly on its gates. Israel's Prime ministers from Rabin onward were quick to grasp the implications of the 1993 mistakes. They grasped quickly that whereas the peace process itself is essential, its concomitant texts jeopardize Israel. Therefore all of them, in truth, tried, to one degree or another, to Renege on the texts. Immediately after letting the horses escape from the stable, Israel's leaders found themselves wandering about the fields searching for those horses. So on the Syrian track they tried for six consecutive years to bypass the quasi-promise that was conveyed mistakenly to Damascus. On the Palestinian track they tried to rectify in the Cairo agreement the mistake they made at Oslo, and in the Hebron agreement they tried to set right the mistake of Cairo, and at Wye the mistake of Hebron. And now they have set about trying to correct Wye. They are doing everything in their power to avoid paying the bills they signed; everything in their power to avoid turning over to the Palestinians what the Oslo accord effectively promises them. This is a hopeless strategy. True, it creates brief respites and Marginal tactical advantages, but it does not address the cardinal issue. Instead of trying to correct the mistakes of 1993 and create a more balanced process, which will impose substantive obligations on the Palestinians, too, Israel is in practice trying to suspend the process. By repeatedly trying to postpone target dates and avoid fulfilling written commitments, Israel is actually trying to give little, and slowly; whereas the proper, right and just thing to do would be to take the opposite approach of demanding a lot and fast. It must be demanded that the Palestinians recognize the Jewish-Israeli people and its right to self-determination in its own nation-state; that they abandon every claim to sovereign Israeli territory; and to forsake the realization of the right of return. It must be made clear to the Palestinians that only if they do all this will they find a partner who will faithfully execute its part in the agreement. A partner who will not create difficulties or resort to stratagems, but will by itself and of its own volition move to end the occupation as quickly as possible © copyright 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved |
