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Asharq Al-Awsat
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Looking Back On Oslo (2)
It has become common knowledge that Benjamin Netanyahu did not hesitate to mobilize the far right, in both its nationalist and religious wings, in a campaign against the Oslo Accords and Yitzhak Rabin. The latter was portrayed wearing the uniform of a Nazi officer in an infamous poster by this campaign that eventually led to Rabin's assassination in 1995. A year earlier, a religious extremist by the name of Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli who had been a follower of Meir Kahane and a member of his movement, murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron while they were praying. Rabin's assassination is considered the major turning point of the Oslo process, and it was a prologue for the slow collapse of the 'peace camp.' On the other side, the growing wave of Hamas 'martyrdom operations,' which peaked in the mid-1990s, saw a security agenda occupy the space that had been vacated by the desire for peace. This eruption of violence coincided with rising tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese front, in 1993 and even more so in 1996. In turn, this polarized climate and broad sense of insecurity paved the way for Netanyahu's narrow electoral victory over Shimon Peres, the Oslo Accords' chief architect and its second key figure. As the terrorist violence by radicals on both sides aggravated, the slur 'Osloist' grew out of 'Arafatist,' a slur that had been coined earlier by Assad's Damascus, whose sponsorship (alongside Iran) of Hamas and its affiliates' activities was no secret. Although peace achieved a second victory through the Wadi Araba Treaty that Jordan and Israel signed in late 1994, Palestinian leaders, first and foremost Arafat, failed to exhibit the degree of responsibility needed to engage in a difficult and complex peace process and meet international commitments. Indeed, such behavior did not come naturally to the Palestinian leader, who had spent most of his political life jockeying with Levantine local communities and security regimes. Moderation also receded among Palestinians, as illustrated by Arafat's flip-flopping during this period. He was torn over whether to comply with the Oslo Accords or not because of the performative bravado of Palestinian, Arab, and Iranian radicals seeking to delegitimize him, which only intensified with the onset of the Second Intifada. In 1994, Arafat made a gaffe at a mosque in South Africa, comparing Oslo to the 'Treaty of Hudaybiyyah' between the Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh at a time when the Israelis were criticizing him for failing to do anything to curb the aggravating terrorist attacks beyond condemning them. Similarly, the elected government in the West Bank and Gaza that was supposed to replace the Palestinian Authority never emerged; corruption, nepotism, and arbitrary rule became entrenched. While opinion polls had, at one point, shown that over two-thirds of the Palestinian public supported Oslo, the number steadily dropped as the conviction that peace would achieve nothing grew. This authority born of peace was not compelling: the occupation persisted, and the checkpoints around Ramallah multiplied in parallel with the aggravation of both the frequency and scale of terrorist attacks, suffocating the Palestinians and restricting their mobility. Meanwhile, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which had stood at 110,000 when Oslo was signed, began to rise, first by tens of thousands and then by hundreds of thousands- international law's prohibition of such settlement activity was irrelevant. Not only did the number of settlements increase, the nature of these settlements also changed: what had begun as a pursuit of functional considerations (cheaper housing and living conditions than those in the cities) was increasingly driven by an ideological, religious, and nationalist desire to acquire land. The Palestinian Authority's tenuous standing among its people went hand in hand with its weak position in the face of the Israelis, with each of these two problems feeding on the other. Because it was too weak to deter terrorist attacks, the Palestinian Authority was also too weak to force the Israelis from expanding settlements or to assert greater control over 'security coordination' with them, and this went both ways. As a result, the Palestinian Authority, focused on proving that it had not been breaching the agreement, was increasingly seen as an Israeli tool concerned only with maintaining the crumbs of a corrupt power structure on the one hand, and on the other, as complicit in the terrorist attacks against Israelis. Even so, this wounded peace had not lost all of its power, and Oslo's potential had not been squandered yet. Following Rabin's assassination, Shimon Peres continued to pursue its implementation as prime minister. Even Netanyahu, after winning the 1996 election, seemed compelled to pretend he had been adhering to it. In early 1997, he allowed the Palestinian Authority to take back control of Hebron, drawing the ire of his right-wing base. In late 1998, Netanyahu, Arafat, and Clinton met at the Wye River Summit in the United States. They agreed to resume the Oslo process: Israel would withdraw from parts of the West Bank, counter-terrorism measures would be implemented, and the Palestinian Authority and Israel agreed to develop their economic ties and continue final status negotiations. The Knesset, for its part, approved the Wye River Memorandum that came out of the summit by a large majority, and the Israeli public largely supported it. When Netanyahu tried to stall and play tricks to obstruct its implementation, his government collapsed in 1999, triggering elections that were won by the Labor candidate and 'Osloist,' Ehud Barak. With Barak's victory, the peace camp had some hope again, though it was faint in comparison to the optimism that followed Rabin's 1992 victory. Barak, amid a drop-in popular support for peace, seemed more hesitant and less decisive than Rabin or Peres. On the other side, Palestinians' confidence in the peace process declined as Israel imposed greater restrictions and set up larger numbers of checkpoints. As for the notion that all of this proves Israel had never sought peace and never will, it is extremely a reductionist assessment.
Saba Yemen
25-02-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
Hamas: Occupier's massacres won't grant it legitimacy, sovereignty over inch of our land
Gaza - Saba: The Islamic Resistance Movement "Hamas" stated that "the massacres of the Zionist occupation will not grant it legitimacy or sovereignty over an inch of the Palestinian lands, and will not succeed in breaking the will of the Palestinian people to stand firm and resist in defense of their land and sanctities. This came in a press statement on Tuesday, on the 31st anniversary of the horrific Ibrahimi Mosque massacre, which was "committed by the extremist Zionist criminal Baruch Goldstein on this day in 1994, with the participation of occupation soldiers and border guard police, during which 29 martyrs were killed and dozens of children and elderly were injured." "This anniversary comes in light of the occupation's escalation of its crimes throughout the West Bank and occupied Quds, and its continuation in implementing its aggressive plans of annexation, displacement, storming and desecration of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, confirming its criminal policy, the systematic attacks against our land, people and holy sites, in flagrant violation of all international norms and covenants, and in disregard of all international community decisions rejecting occupation and aggression," Hamas added. On the anniversary of this horrific massacre, the movement offered its condolences to "the souls of our righteous martyrs who ascended in our people's march towards freedom, independence and defense of the land and holy sites. We ask Allah Almighty for a speedy recovery for the wounded, and the imminent freedom of our heroic prisoners. We salute the masses of our great people who are steadfast on their land and clinging to their rights in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Quds, the occupied interior, and in refugee camps and diaspora." "The massacre of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron is a systematic and repeated fascist model against our Palestinian people, the details of which the world witnessed in the aggression against the Gaza Strip by the criminal Netanyahu and his extremist government and his Zionist army. They pose a real threat not only to our land and our people, but also to the security and stability of the region and the world, in light of international silence and failure to criminalize and stop their violations." Hamas said "the occupier's Judaization and settlement plans throughout the West Bank and occupied Quds, through attempts to seize, annex, desecrate and erase identity, and prevent worshipers from performing their worship by force of arms and the rampage of extremist settlers, will not succeed in terrorizing our people or falsifying the facts of history, and will not grant the occupation legitimacy or sovereignty over an inch of our land, and will fail to break the will of our people to resist in defense of their land and holy sites." "The memory of our people is alive, they will not forget or forgive these crimes and massacres committed by the enemy against them, not the last of which are the crimes of genocide against our people in the Gaza Strip for more than fifteen months, and its ongoing crimes in the West Bank and Quds; these are described, documented and proven crimes, and will not be subject to a statute of limitations." The movement renewed its demand "for the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and all human rights organizations in the world to prosecute the leaders of the occupation for their heinous crimes against our land, our people and our holy sites, and to work to prevent them from escaping trial and punishment, and to reject American pressures that support and partner with the occupation in its crimes and massacres." Hamas called on "the masses of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Quds, the occupied interior, and in refugee camps and the diaspora to continue their steadfastness, perseverance, and resistance, and to strengthen the bonds of national cohesion and solidarity, and to stand as one solid structure; for you are the rock under which all the plans of the enemy and its supporters in displacement and liquidation of our national cause will be shattered." She stressed that "we are with you in one trench, until our rights are seized, our aspirations are achieved, our enemy is defeated, and our independent state is established with Quds as its capital." Whatsapp Telegram Email Print
