The Israelis and Palestinians must accept
that they were both responsible for the collapse of the Oslo agreement.
By Guy Bechor in Herzeliya (IWPR
Conflict Report: Middle East, January 2002)
With the Palestinian uprising now entering its second year, it's time for Israeli society to ask itself why the Oslo agreements failed. This is not merely an academic question, whose answer can be postponed until the end of the violence. It's a practical question, and the answer should provide lessons about the proper way to deal with the Palestinian issue now and in the future.
Both sides share the blame for the failure of the Oslo accord. Israel contributed to the collapse in confidence in the peace process and to undermining Palestinian hopes. But the Palestinian intifada contributed to Israeli loss of faith and hope. Each side feels the other is not a partner with whom it is possible to reach a compromise.
This is a grave situation, worrisome to all those who still believe in the possibility of a realistic, pragmatic solution to the crisis. If the mistakes of both sides are not rationally and bravely analysed, it will be impossible to break out of the vicious cycle of bloodshed into which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has sunk.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders must begin to show political maturity, which is so critically important for the pacification of the crisis and the region. So far, they have only sought to delegitimise each other.
The Oslo accord was an interim agreement, meant to postpone the handing over of territory to the Palestinian Authority, PA, for a number of years - a process intended to create a level of trust between the two sides. But Israelis increasingly saw the postponement as a permanent state of affairs - many of them believed that, in effect, the conflict was over. This led to Israel becoming greedy and haughty.
Israeli governments failed to recognise in time the growing bitterness of the Palestinians at the interminably slow pace of progress. For Israel the seven years of Oslo led to economic growth (reaching a GDP of 114 billion US dollars) and hopes of becoming a global player. For the Palestinians, those years meant poverty (a GDP of barely 2.5 billion dollars), humiliation, and despair.
The Oslo agreement offered the illusion of an open frontier, with industrial parks instead of borders, as if it were possible to attain a joint economy between one of the richest countries in the world and one of the poorest, without serious tensions. No wonder the industrial parks were one of the first targets of Palestinian violence, even though vandalising them worked against their own economic interests.
The illusion of Oslo faded after the Palestinians understood that even if the elements of the accord were fulfilled in their entirety, the status quo would remain. Israel would continue to have full control over a Palestinian entity; whether it was called the Palestinian Authority or the State of Palestine, it would be little more than a large workers' camp serving Israel.
But the Palestinians also contributed to the collapse of Oslo when they began their dance of violence and bloodshed. By doing so, they lost the one ally they've ever had in the region. Israel is the only power that has ever given the Palestinians anything. And with the outbreak of violence, the Palestinians alienated the Israeli government and the Israeli public, particularly the left, which has still not recovered from the shock of their revolt.
At the same time, Yasser Arafat failed to understand the enormity of the historic challenge he faced, and continued behaving as the leader of a revolution rather than a head of state. He incited instead of healed, rabble-roused instead of calmed.
Since Israel made the PA the ruler of the territories, the regime has been characterised by corruption, protectionism, nepotism, and the kind of arbitrary rule so typical of Arab regimes. From a society of dialogue, it turned into a society of monologue.
Nonetheless, the Oslo experiment was worthwhile, because for the first time in 100 years, the two parallel narratives - the Jewish narrative, as represented by Zionism, and the Palestinian narrative, as told by the PLO - met and touched each other. They became intertwined at Oslo. That may have been painful, but it will lead to something else, and eventually an arrangement between the two national movements.
Many elements in Oslo were correct and the accord could yet lead to a new diplomatic, political, and social structure. For the next peace initiative to succeed, however, there must be mutual respect and empathy between the two sides.
Guy Bechor is an expert on Arab law at the Interdisciplinary Centre in Israel and a content consultant for the Arabic website of the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.
