Oslo: Recognizing failure but not learning from it

Oslo: Recognizing failure but not learning from it

Ze'ev Jabotinsky


The Meretz party's new political platform proposes overturning the Oslo Accords. The leaders of this party were among the original initiators of the agreements, and the most active in getting them approved, yet even they admit now that the Oslo Accords are a failure.

Oslo caused enormous damage: It upgraded the Palestine Liberation Organization's status from a terrorist organization to an internationally recognized legitimate political organization. Two weeks before the exposure of the secret Oslo talks, huge headlines emerged suggesting that the PLO was nearing final dissolution due to its senior members' desperation and the lack of funds for continued terrorism against Israel. It was at that point that then PLO leader Yasser Arafat was given a lifeline, and he used it to establish an armed presence inside Israel, a move that until then he had only dreamed about.

Under the protection of Oslo, Arafat's emissaries murdered more than 1,600 Israelis and caused crippling injuries to thousands more, while the Israeli economy sustained losses in the billions, thousands of families became refugees in their own land, and, worst of all, Israel lost legitimacy in the world. The legitimacy was lost because Israel built an international stage for Arafat, which he used to disseminate his lies about invented rights that come at the expense of the rights to which we are entitled to by international law.

Arafat received a helping hand in his delegitimization campaign from groups associated with Meretz, such as attorney Talia Sasson's report on "illegal" settlements in Judea and Samaria, which completely ignored our right under international law to settle all the land in Israel. The conclusions of Sasson's report were completely refuted years later by Justice Edmond Levy's report, but the political, public and legal damage had already been done.

The Oslo Accords turned the citizens of Israel into lab rats in a political science experiment. Despite the failure of the experiment, which led to Meretz's current call to overturn the accords, party leaders are still not repenting. On the contrary. Like a compulsive gambler, Meretz is now coming back with an even more risky bet, in an effort to mask its culpability for the failure of the initial accords.

Meretz's new platform replaces the principle of direct negotiations with an "international umbrella" that includes, among others, obvious "friends" of Israel like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and President Mohammed Morsi's Egypt. These manipulative words merely imply the creation of an international mechanism that would dictate to Israel concessions that are unacceptable to most of its citizens. Meretz is doing its best to sabotage the democratic process and enforce implementation of policies contrary to the will of the majority. Meretz turns to detours to get around the obstacle called democracy.

The cornerstone of Meretz's renewed platform is the adoption of the Geneva Accord as a basis for action. This is an agreement between unauthorized persons from both sides; its presentation as a political agreement is pure deceit. Geneva is, at most, an effort by foreign countries to influence Israeli public opinion through massive government funding from them. These funds intend to undermine our democracy by serving political interests contrary to those of the State of Israel, at least in the opinion of most citizens, as we will see in the coming elections.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3127