NATIV Online        

  Vol. 4  /  June 2004                      A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE ARTS      

     

Re-Evaluating “Oslo” in Light of the “Roadmap”

Preface

My book, Failure or Folly, traces, step by step, the Oslo process, from its roots in 1992 until its collapse at Taba 2001. The Oslo process did, indeed, radically change the Middle East, but not as hoped. Hindsight has forced me to re-evaluate the Oslo process in light of subsequent plans, drafted as a backlash against the failure of the Oslo process.

Failure or Folly highlights the follies that impaired the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process, but also the determination of the Israeli negotiators to protect Israeli interests. The Oslo process did not fail at the negotiation table, but rather in implementation. The Israeli negotiators who have emerged out of the ashes of the Oslo process are not of the same mettle. Subsequent plans, the Roadmap, Geneva and Disengagement, have all subordinated Israeli interests to Palestinian interests, reducing the State of Israel into a facilitator for the establishment of a flourishing Palestinian state.

Re-Evaluating Oslo in Light of the Roadmap

On April 30, 2003, the US State Department released the text of the “roadmap” to a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”. The roadmap is comprised of three phases that will culminate in a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The execution of the roadmap is under the auspices of the Quartet – the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia, and it these countries who will have ultimate jurisdiction over arbitrating its implementation.

The Roadmap to a Palestinian State

Although the roadmap is titled “Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”, a textual analysis of the roadmap easily reveals that the roadmap is really nothing more than a roadmap to the establishment of a viable, prosperous Palestinian state. Just by flipping through it, one can see that it is built on two legs, one large, strong, sturdy leg, one puny, decrepit, fragile leg.

Even a cursive glance at the roadmap reveals that it is devoted almost exclusively to the realization of the dream of a reformed, democratic, prosperous Palestinian state. Article after article specifies the Quartet’s commitment and dedication to the Palestinian state.

Other than security issues, such as a cession of terror and incitement to terror, the roadmap does not say a word in regard to the enhancement of Israeli’s interests or welfare. On the contrary, not only is there no concern for for the State of Israel, Israel is required to sacrifice its own interests for the benefit of the Palestinian state.

The roadmap waxes eloquently as to the changes that shall take place in the course of the metamorphosis the Palestinian Authority will undergo until it shall be incarnated into the democratic Palestinian state envisioned by the Quartet. Special emphasis is placed on the reconstruction of the Palestinian’s security apparatus and political reform. Attaining this dream of a reinvented Palestinian state and Palestinian people requires billions of dollars. To assure the realization of these goals, the Quartet is committing itself to investing unlimited funds in the Palestinian state, in addition to the billions transferred in the past, a significant part of which had funded the war of terror against the State of Israel and Israeli citizens.

The Palestinians will be receiving this horn of abundance with no strings attached. The donor countries will not be loaning the money; the money will be lavished upon them without their having to assume a burden of debt.

In contrast, to persuade Israel to approve the roadmap, the US promised $1 billion, the bulk of which to be spent on American products, and a further $7 million in loan guarantees. No horn of abundance for Israel; only crippling debt for the foreseeable future.

Fallacious Assumptions at the Foundation of the Roadmap

The Roadmap resurrects the same fallacious assumptions that doomed the Oslo Accords to failure from the outset:

  • The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a territorial dispute, and as such, one needs only to find a border that would be acceptable to both parties.
     

  • The Palestinian Authority is serious about ending violence and terror.
     

  • The key problem is that the Palestinians do not have a state. Once they grasp that the Roadmap will lead to a Palestinian state, they will comply with its conditions.
     

  • Israel’s existence and Palestinian national rights can be reconciled.
     

  • Israel’s security requirements and Palestinian non-negotiable demands can be reconciled.

Abrogating Israel’s Sovereignty

The roadmap grants the Quartet total judiciary power over the implementation process, with the member organizations having unlimited authority to impose monitors on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These monitors will supervise the process, and have ultimate authority to decide whether the parties to the roadmap have met their obligations. Progress from phase to phase will be based upon the judgment of the Quartet of whether appropriate conditions for proceeding are in place, taking into account the performance of both parties. The roadmap stipulates that:

The Quartet will meet regularly at senior levels to evaluate the parties’ performance on implementation of the plan... Progress into Phase II will be based upon the consensus judgment of the Quartet of whether conditions are appropriate to proceed, taking into account performance of both parties... Enhanced international role in monitoring transition, with the active, sustained, and operational support of the Quartet.

The roadmap authorizes the Quartet to adjudicate every step in the roadmap implementation process. In doing so, it has placed restrictions on the sovereignty of the Israeli government. The roadmap, in essence, deprives the sovereign State of Israel the basic democratic right to make decisions on the basis of the integrity of the country and the welfare of its citizens. Not the government of Israel, nor its citizens, will decide what is good for Israel, but rather the Quartet.

In reality, by approving the roadmap, Israel delegated to the Quartet full powers over the conduct of its affairs of state, the Israeli government rendered a mere puppet. In effect, each cabinet decision must be evaluated by the Quartet’s yardstick, not the welfare of the country or its citizens.

Although President Bush’s vision extolls democracy in the Middle East, its roadmap breaches the very essence and fundamentals of democracy. Thus, although the roadmap repeatedly makes references to a democratic Palestinian state, the roadmap includes articles that suspend the Israeli democratic process.

The Quartet, and all the states that will be participating in the international conferences, will be arrogating for themselves supreme power over Israel. Israel will metamorphose into “the Jew of the Diaspora”. The roadmap re-creates the 2,000 years of exile, with Jews once more impotent and powerless, once again at the mercy of the same states guilty of the Holcaust either by direct commision or by ommission. With anti-Semitism soaring, and once more legitimate, the roadmap places Israel, and its Jewish population, in jeopardy, at the mercy of countries that finance Palestinian terror, adulate its leader, and have a record of collaborating with the destruction of the State of Israel.

Creating a Virtual Reality: Israeli Approval of the Roadmap

Relying on the May 23, 2003 United States government commitment to fully and seriously address its comments to the Roadmap, Israel agreed, by a majority of one, on the 26th of May, to accept the steps set out in the Roadmap. The Israeli government’s approval consisted of two resolutions, and a list of “comments”, or “reservations”, that constituted Israel’s red lines.

The Primary Themes of Israel’s Reservations

The following are the primary themes contained in the reservations submitted to the Quartet:

  1. There would be no progress to phase II without the fulfillment of all these conditions: dismantling the terrorist organizations and infrastructure, confiscating illegal weapons, and combating terror, violence, and incitement.
     

  2. Full performance as a condition for progress between phases.
     

  3. The emergence of a new Palestinian leadership.
     

  4. The Palestinian state shall have provisional borders and certain aspects of sovereignty, be fully demilitarized, with no military forces or authority to undertake defense alliances or military cooperation. Israel shall maintain control over the air space and entry and exit of persons and cargo.
     

  5. Reference must be made to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and Palestinian waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel.
     

  6. The end of the process will lead to the end of all claims and the end of the conflict.

On November 20, 2003, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to endorse the Roadmap, deliberately omitting all 14 Israeli reservations. This resolution, as formulated, effectively excludes the sovereign State of Israel from the decision-making process that will decide its future.

Oslo Accords Versus the Roadmap

There is a saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Quartet’s performance-based roadmap, certainly, embodies this saying. Without a doubt, the roadmap is a victory for the Palestinians, a reward for terror, and an unprecedented achievement attained through consistent non-compliance to their commitments. The Palestinians launched an intifada in September 2000, murdering more than 1,200 Israelis, and they were rewarded with a state. They also succeeded in realizing their major goals: internationalizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a real chance of forcing Israel to withdraw, at the very least, to the 1967 borders.

On June 24, 2002, President Bush proclaimed his “vision” for Mideast peace. One of its central tenets was the unequivocal statement that “The United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.” Somewhere along the road, this primary principle and tenet of President Bush’s speech was either distorted or eliminated from the roadmap.

Down the Slippery Slope: From Oslo to the Roadmap

The Oslo Accords were signed at an impressive ceremony at the White House in September 1993. Ten years under the Oslo process, and three and a half years of a Palestinian intifada   against Israel and Israeli citizens, attest to the utter collapse of the Oslo process, and the bankruptcy of the ideology underpinning the Oslo Accords.

The drafters of the roadmap subscribed to the same fallacies that had led to the collapse of the Oslo process. Even worse, while the Oslo agreements incorporated checks and balances, even if they were not implemented, the roadmap was devoid of these mechanisms.

The following table summarizes the primary differences between the Oslo Accords and the roadmap.*        

    Oslo Accords

    Performance-Based Roadmap

    The goal was peace and Israeli-Palestinian co-existence

    The goal is the establishment of a Palestinian state.

    Prime Minister Rabin firmly insisted that:

    • There will be no Palestinian state,

    • Jerusalem will not be divided

    • The Palestinian Authority will be demilitarized

    Negates all three of PM Rabin’s paramount convictions:

    • The establishment of a Palestinian state

    • The division of Jerusalem.

    • No restrictions on Palestinian security forces

    Mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO. In signing the Oslo Accords, PM Rabin attributed paramount importance to sustaining Israel as a Jewish state.

    Israel must recognize, and assist in the establishment of, a Palestinian state. The PA is exempt from recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.

    PLO leadership receives a foothold in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but no control over the land.

    The PLO receives a sovereign Palestinian state.

    Bi-lateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians

    Imposed by the Quartet. Israel has no right to appeal, add, or detract.

    Direct and indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians despite PLO maneuvering to avoid granting legitimacy to Israel.

    Realization of Arafat’s dream:

    Internationalizing the conflict, international mediation and monitoring: Quartet will supervise, monitor, referee and adjudicate the process and the “performance”.

    Progress in Oslo process only after meticulous, security-orientated negotiations that culminated in the PLO signing an agreement (although articles were cloned from agreement to the next owing to PLO non-compliance.

    Progress measured in terms of redeployment of Israeli forces and the transfer of authority to the PA over areas in Gaza and the West Bank. The eradication of terror relegated to a secondary issue.

    Israel retained authority and control over the progress of the Oslo agreements by controlling the timing, scope and area of redeployment.

    The Quartet is the arbitrator and the adjudicator at all phases in the roadmap process and progress.

    The Oslo Accords did not prevent the settlement of Jews in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

    Freeze existing settlement activity and dismantle settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

    Israel’s concessions were reversible.

    Israel’s concessions are irreversible.

    Horizon that would lead to the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict

    End of conflict with Palestinians and Arab world not a factor.

    Reciprocity required, with progress conditioned on compliance, in particular quelling violence and eliminating incitement

    No reciprocity required. The Palestinians will unconditionally be given a sovereign Palestinian state.

 As brilliantly analyzed by Boris Shusteff,

...for the Arabs to continue on the road toward Israel’s destruction, the OA [Oslo Accords] was lacking several very important provisions. It did not have a clause that guaranteed the Arabs sovereign control over the land that they needed to advance their Plan of Stages. It did not have a mechanism directed against Jewish settlement activity. It forced the parties to conduct direct negotiations with each other, and,...it was reversible, meaning that Israel could stop her retreat if she felt that it endangered her existence.1

The roadmap corrected these lapses.

The roadmap, the new world religion, is fraught with fallacies and contradictions. It will not bring peace and security. It will not eradicate terrorism. It will not bring prosperity, neither to the Palestinian state nor to the international community.

The roadmap completely changes the whole Oslo equation.

It gives the Arabs absolutely everything that they dreamed of, and gives Israel nothing that hasn’t been “given” before. The Roadmap allows the PA to continue its policy of squeezing out Israel while demanding from the Arabs only intangible promises in return.2

 

Conclusions

The concept of “performance-based” is a euphimism for Israeli concessions regardless of Palestinian non-compliance. The Quartet continues to urge Israel not to let the continued terrorism against civilians deter it from living up to its commitments under the roadmap. One clear message emerges from these efforts: terror against Israelis should not stalemate the progress towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The roadmap is governed by the same false assumptions as the Oslo process, the same paramount importance attributed to progress, the same disregard for the welfare of Israelis. The only difference is that under the Oslo Accords Israel controlled the pace of the process, and the agreements were a bulwark against risks to the existence of the State of Israel, and to its citizens. Under the roadmap, Israel’s existential concerns become immaterial. The only consideration of any importance is whether or not ‘progress’ facilitates the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In hindsight, it may be stated that the follies of the Oslo process were reversible. The Israeli team made efforts to be hardnosed and uncompromising in the negotiations, but gradually backtracked. Nonetheless, a look at the big picture reveals that the major follies lie with the implementation of the agreements, not in their formulation.

This all changed at Camp David when PM Barak yielded to President Clinton’s pressure, and jettisoned Israeli red lines. PM Sharon is walking the same road, transforming progress into a surrogate for peace and security for Israel.

From Oslo to Geneva: From the Pan into the Fire

William Shakespeare wrote that “All the world is a stage, and we are all merely actors.” This was never so true when the Geneva Accord was presented to the world as a “permanent status agreement” between Israel and Palestine. Time Magazine, in its December 4 edition, dubbed it a hypothetical Israeli-Palestinian peace [that] is classic political theater.The Geneva Accord, as everyone agrees, is no more than a virtual document, sponsored by politicians who were ignobly defeated at the polls. Even Yossi Beilin, the power behind the agreement, admitted that the Geneva Accord was no more than a virtual document. However, the world hailed it as a step forward.

The pinnacle of the absurd was the “signing” ceremony of the unofficial document in Geneva, Switzerland Although conceding that the document is virtual, this didn’t bother a host of foreign dignitaries and celebrities from swooping on Geneva to celebrate the signing of a non-agreement. Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey praised it as “a little light in the darkness”, while UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan extolled the initiative as having “caught the imagination”. Lech Walesa joined the Geneva ceremony, Nelson Mandela contributed video greetings, and endorsements came in from Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac. A letter of support was signed by 58 former presidents, premiers and other foreign leaders. The President of Israel, Moshe Katzav, met with the Israeli initiators, and Secretary of State Powell not only sent his own letter of encouragement, but invited the chief negotiators, Yossi Beilin and Abed Rabbo, to meet with him.

Ostensibly a showcase to display the vision of peace held by the Israeli negotiators and their Palestinian partners for peace, neither the Palestinian peace partners, nor Former US President Jimmy Carter, could resist demonizing Israel. In line with this atmosphere, the Israeli speakers “did not hear” the Arab representatives calling PM Sharon a fascist, nor the songs of praise they sang to their fighters and martyrs, terrorists who have slaughtered more than 1,200 Jewish lives in the past four years. To compound this, the Israelis, at this “mometous moment of Israeli-Palestinian accord”, did not even bother to condemn Palestinian terrorism or vicious anti-Semitic and Anti-Israeli incitement.

However, just as the theatre has an impact on reality, so does the virtual reality of the Geneva Accord inflict irreparable damage to the State of Israel.

From Oslo to Geneva

The Geneva process embodies virtual reality, a reality with no past, present or future, and no geographical dimension.

  1. No Past – no Oslo Accords, no terrorism, no incitement, no consistent non-compliance to agreements;
     

  2. No present – no terror, no threats against Israel, no vicious anti-Israeli and Anti-Semitic incitement and malevolent propaganda sponsored and disseminated by the Palestinian Authority;
     

  3. No future – no responsibility for the ramifications, repercussions and consequences of the Accord;
     

  4. No Geographical dimension – no soaring anti-Semitism worldwide, both in words and deeds; no Muslim and Arab threats towards the integrity of the State of Israel and against the Jewish People.

Although the initiators of the Geneva Accord claim that the Accord is based on Clinton’s parameters, the fact is that the Accord contains a huge leap towards the Palestinian positions, relinquishing major red lines, without the Palestinians ever making a single concession.

The Geneva Accord was written as if the various agreements between the PLO/Palestinian Authority and Israel, from the Oslo Accord in 1993, up to Wye in 1998, had never been signed. The Geneva Accord is impervious to the PA’s 10 year non-compliance to obligations, including the three and half-year inhuman terrorist war waged against Israel. It is, therefore, not surprising, that the Accord recycles Palestinian obligations, presenting them as if they were a breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and not a regurgitation of the same obligations. The only thing real for the Geneva negotiators is the virtual world they created.

The Geneva Accord: the Incarnation of the Roadmap

When Israeli officials, and most notably Prime Minister Sharon, couch their opposition to Geneva by evoking the Roadmap, they are misleading the Israeli populace. The Roadmap drafted the guidelines; Geneva realizes them. The Geneva Accord and the Roadmap are two sides of the same coin; both being blueprints for the establishment of a Palestinian state. In fact, the Roadmap established many of the guidelines incorporated in the Geneva Accord.

  1. The ultimate goal is not peace, but rather a final and comprehensive permanent status agreement.
     

  2. The highly acclaimed roadmap forces Israel to accept at the outset the establishment of a Palestinian state ruled by the PLO. The renouncing of terror, and the suppression of the terrorist organizations are no longer pre-conditions.
     

  3. No stipulation that the PA desist from all violence prior to Israeli withdrawals, rendering Israeli withdrawal the sine qua non of both agreements.
     

  4. Attaching top priority to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
     

  5. Internationalizing the conflict by empowering an international supervisory/monitory force, that includes countries inimical to Israel's welfare to supervise implementation.
     

  6. Emasculating Israel’s sovereignty by vesting the international supervisory/ monitory force exclusive responsibility for arbitrating and adjudicating the progress in executing the articles of the peace plan.
     

  7. Trivializing Israel’s concern for security, with the bulk of the demands required from the Palestinians on the declarative level.
     

  8. Disregarding Israel’s 14 reservations, thus upsetting the balance of power between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
     

  9. Focusing, almost exclusively, on Palestinian concerns and demands.
     

  10. Relying on the good will of the Palestinians, with no unequivocal demands that steps are to be taken, or mechanisms put into place, to ensure Israel’s security.
     

  11. Denying Israel recourse to reverse the process when (not if, relying on precedent) the Palestinians launch attacks against Israel.

In contrast to the Roadmap, which does not allude to the Palestinian refugees, the Geneva Accord devotes a great deal of attention to this issue, peremptorily relating to the State of Israel as a mere pawn in the resolution of the problem.

  1. The “assumption” of the Palestinian narrative of the “refugee problem”, as a well as the absorption of an indeterminate number of refugees; and
     

  2. The “assumption” of a crippling burden of compensation to both refugees and host countries.

In a nutshell, the Geneva Accord concessions are beyond folly; they are national and religious suicide.

Ariel Sharon’s “Disengagement Plan”

In his long-awaited speech at the annual Herzliya Conference, Prime Minister Sharon first confirmed the government’s commitment to the Roadmap. He, however, omitted the very salient fact that Israeli qualifications, formulated to protect Israel’s existential interests, had all been rejected out of hand both by the Quartet and the UN General Assembly.

Sharon, then, went on to present his key innovation. In his speech, which was, as expected, a sharp departure from the Likud’s traditional policy, Sharon presented the main features of his “Disengagement plan” whose main feature was unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The “disengagement” from the Palestinians would include the redeployment of IDF forces along new security lines and a change in the deployment of settlements, in order to reduce as much as possible the number of Israelis located in the heart of the Palestinian population.

Without a doubt, Sharon’s plan is the epitome of folly, a repetition of PM Barak’s rout from Lebanon. The plan encourages the Palestinians to continue their terrorist attacks against Israel, and not comply with the roadmap. Why should they? The terror attacks have won them unrequited concessions that will constitute the opening positions in the next round of negotiations.

...the unilateral retreat not only grants the Palestinians short-term gains; it simultaneously assures them that they risk no permanent long-term losses. Sharon’s speech boils down to, therefore, an unadorned withdrawal under fire, with no compensatory moves whatsoever.3

In presenting his plan, Sharon turned his back on the virtually wall-to-wall consensus that the Left’s method of unreciprocated concessions had proven to be a total failure. Evelyn Gordon quotes Ha’aretz columnist Zvi Bar’el who aptly noted that once one accepts the premise that “in order to increase security, it is necessary to retreat a bit,” it becomes difficult to explain why it does not logically follow that “in order to increase security even more, it is necessary to retreat even further” – precisely what the Left has been advocating all along.

This move eradicates all the gains that Sharon has made over the last three years in convincing the rest of the world that Israel has a right to expect an end to terrorism in exchange for a withdrawal. Now that even Sharon has waived this requirement, why should the rest of the world uphold it? Indeed, the only lesson the international community can reasonably draw from his retreat is the opposite: that with enough pressure, Israel can be forced to concede even its most cherished red lines without a single Palestinian concession in exchange.4

This conclusion is almost certain to lead to increased international pressure on Israel for further withdrawals, with no respite to terror, and no reciprocity on the part of the Palestinians.

President Bush Endorses Sharon’s Disengagement Plan

On April 13, Sharon embarked on a trip to the US in order to obtain President Bush’s endorsement of his “Disengagement plan”. On April 14, at a press conference, Bush and Sharon presented a united front in support of the plan, inducing Sharon to label the President’s “historical” pledges as “the toughest blow dealt to the Palestinians since 1948”. The Deputy Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, went even further, claiming that, “I don’t know of any other Israeli Prime Minister who has ever made such historical gains in a White House encounter.”

Nonetheless, there were significant discrepancies between the Sharon and Bush formulations, especially in their presentation to the Israeli public. An impartial analysis of what had actually been said by Bush, and contained in his letter, shows that Sharon’s and Olmert’s hyperbole was an misrepresentation of the truth.

Refugees

Bush did not reject the Palestinians’ “right of return” to the State of Israel, but rather equivocated. What he had actually said was that

It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

In other words, within the framework of negotiations on final status between Israel and the Palestinians, it is clear, but not guaranteed, that the refugees would settle in the Palestinian state.

Borders and Major Settlement Blocs

Ostensibly, President Bush had recognized certain Israeli settlement blocs, however, the truth is that he actually evaded the issue. Bush had merely stated, in an ambiguous, non-binding declaration, that

In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949... It is realistic to expect...mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

As can be seen, Bush talked in terms of “realistic” and “unrealistic”. There was no guarantee that Israel would be allowed to retain the major settlement blocs, such as Maale Adumim, the Jerusalem neighborhoods, Gush Etzion and Ariel.

Security

The preamble to the plan emphasizes that the rationale of the plan is the absence of a Palestinian partner with which Israel can engage in a peace dialogue. Nonetheless, the United States and the international committee will join forces, with the blessings of Israel, “to strengthen the capacity and will of Palestinian security forces to fight terrorism and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure”.

In other words, Bush calls for an international effort to arm and train the Palestinian security forces, who are not a partner for peace, and who have been collaborating with the terrorist organizations in the terroist onslaught on Israelis.

Indeed, the Disengagement plan requires that Israel, in conjunction with the US, the UK, Jordan and Egypt, provide military training to Palestinian armed forces, regardless of the fact that the ostensible justification of the withdrawal was that the Palestinians were not a peace partner.

In addition, the plan requires that Israel continue to provide services and aid to the Palestinians.

To encapsulate, the bulk of President Bush’s statement focused on his vision of a thriving Palestinian state and Israeli obligations to withdraw from settlements and to freeze existing settlements. Bush succeeded in obtaining Israel’s commitment to initiate a historic process of withdrawal and evacuation of Jewish settlements so as to create conditions conducive to the establishment a contiguous and viable Palestinian state in exchange for non-binding statements.

Watering Down “Sharon’s Achievements”

On April 15, the day after the “historic” meeting, the Bush administration began backtracking. Already on the following day, Secretary of State Colin Powell unequivocally denied that President Bush had recognized Israel’s right to retain the settlement blocks. He also stated that “the President did not declare that the Palestinians do not have the right of return.” In tandem, the State Department emphasized that no essential change had been made in the policies of the United States, and the President was only reflecting what had been said by other administrations. In brief, senior officials in the Bush administration efffectively emptied President’s Bush’s statements of all meaning.

On May 3, the Quartet – the US, the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union, declared that Israel “must end the Israeli occupation that began in 1967”, implying a complete Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders.

However, the most crucial development was the backlash in the Arab world, that vociferously condemned the Bush administration’s pro-Israel bias. Evidently Sharon’s and Olmert’s hyperbole had infuriated the Arab and Muslim world, inducing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to charge that Arab hatred of America had never been greater. The US, in danger of losing its Arab allies, began to repudiate the assurances given to Sharon.

In a joint press appearance with Abdullah, king of Jordan, Bush reassured the king and the Arab world

As I have previously stated, all final-status issues must be negotiated between the parties in accordance with UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the United States will not prejudice the outcome of those negotiations.
 

1949 Armistice Lines

The most puzzling element in President Bush’s formal statement was the allusion to the 1949 Armistice lines rather than the usual 1967 borders. DEBKAfile’s political analysts examined the1949 Armistice Agreements to find out why.

They found that the 1949 agreements...left open or as demilitarized zones large and highly strategic areas of pre-1967 Israel, including the Hamma intersection of the Israeli, Jordanian and Syrian borders, the Nitzana region south of the Gaza Strip and abutting on Sinai in the Israeli Negev, the eastern half of the Israeli Arava from Tsofar south of the Dead Sea up to Eilat at its southernmost tip. Putting these large chunks of Israel back on the negotiating table would provide a pretext for Egypt and Jordan to re-open its peace treaties with Israel and lay fresh claims to more territory.5

Arab Response

Palestinian leadership, including the terrorist organizations, have unequivocally declared that Sharon’s Disengagement plan is a victory obtained thorough the armed struggle. Certainly the plan has reinforced the faith the Palestinians have in terror as the preferable strategy for obtaining their “rights”.

The Likud Referendum

Realizing that he did not have party support for his plan, Sharon was persuaded to initiate a party referendum on his unilateral disengagement plan and its concomitant pledge to uproot 7,500 Jews from the Gaza Strip and from four West Bank settlements. The referendum was planned for two weeks after Sharon’s successful meeting with Bush in order to reap the fruits of Bush’s “unprecedented assurances”. Sharon gave his commitment to honor the results of the referendum.

Indeed, at the outset, Sharon’s strategy was on the high road to victory. On April 16, polls showed that support for the Disengagement plan was around 49%, while only 38% opposed it. Then, something unprecedented in the history of the State of Israel occurred – a grassroots, coordinated effort was launched by the settlers to personally visit every single Likud member to persuade him/her to vote against Sharon’s plan.

In support of the Jewish community, nearly 100,000 Israels streamed to the Gaza Strip on Independence day to show their solidarity with the settlers. Whether deliberately or not, soldiers were ordered to close the entrance to the Jewish settlements at around 12:30 and tens of thousands of Israelis were stranded for hours in a huge traffic jam. Indicative of the raison d’être for driving down to the Gaza Strip, very few cars turned around and went home.

The success of the opponents was astounding. As the days passed, the gap between supporters and opponents decreased. On the eve of the referendum, polls showed that the opposition even had a slight gain over the supporters, raising hopes that the campaign was a success. On May 2, to everyone’s astonishment, the opponents won a landslide victory, 59.5% as against 39.5%.

Disengagement Plan Approved

After a lot of turmoil and drama, Sharon’s disengagement plan was approved on June 6, 2004. It is, perhaps, appropriate that the plan was approved specifically on this day as it conjures up, to some extent, the deployment of forces on the eve of the Six-Day War on June 6, 1967.

Ostensibly, the Israeli cabinet approved a watered-down version, but in essence, nothing was changed, just cosmetic changes. This ploy allowed Likud ministers Benyamin Netanyahu, Limor Livnat and Silvan Shalom to vote in favor of the plan without losing face and ministerial posts.

This was quite apparent in Sharon’s speech, in which he stated, “The disengagement process has begun. Today, the Government decided that it is Israel’s intention to relocate all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and four settlements in Samaria by the end of 2005.”

The plan was approved notwithstanding the stepped-up efforts of the terrorist organizations to obtain more advanced weaponry. This assessement became certainty when Turkish authorities confiscated a ship bound for the Palestinian Authority carrying a vast trove of weapons, including a radio-controlled missile and launcher, rockets and warheads. This threat was not even factored into the political storm.

Reviving the Past

Reverting to the War of Independence

The Egyptians have expressed their consent to ensure Israel’s security after total withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. However, they have made this contingent upon Israel creating a ‘safe passage’ corridor between the Gaza Strip to Judea and Samaria. Dr. Guy Bechor, of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, has pointed out that such a corridor embodies the Egyptian dream of returning to the Falujah pocket, not far from Kiryat Gat, where Egyptian forces were trapped during the War of Independence in 1948.

Sharon’s disengagement plan, in effect, reverts the State of Israel to the middle of the War of Independence.

Reverting to June 5, 1967

Within the framework of the Disengagement plan, Sharon plans to allocate a central role to Egypt in securing Israel’s southern border after withdrawal. However, the Camp David agreement does not permit the presence of heavy Egyptian security forces along the border, allowing Egypt to deploy only police units. Thus, the agreement places strict restrictions on the deployment of armed Egyptian forces and patrol units near the Israeli-Egyptian international border. To overcome this obstacle, PM Sharon has initiated talks with Egypt for the purpose of discussing the amendment of this key security article for the purpose of co-opting Egyptian security forces to patrol the international border. Such an amendment would allow Egyptian military mobility throughout the Sinai Peninsula, effectively nullifying the demilitarization of Sinai. The annulment of this article would allow Egypt free movement on the southern border, thus enhancing Egypt’s capability of moving forces into Israel should it be expedient. Sharon’s initiative is, thus, reconstituting the pre-Six Day War military deployment on Israel’s southern border.6

It should be pointed out that Egypt and Egyptian military forces have either turned a blind eye or have collaborated in the effort to assure an endless flow of arms and artillary to the Palestinian Authority and to the terrorist organizations. Certainly, the Karin A, carrying tons of weapons, could not have entered the Sinai strait without the cooperation of Egyptian authorities.

Add to this Sharon’s proposal to invite the Jordanians to supervise security in Judea and Samaria, and you have a frightening scenario. The redeployment of Egyptian and Jordanian forces erases Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, and hurls us back to the square one of June 5, 1967.

History Does Repeat Itself

Sharon, evidently, is determined to make the same mistakes that the Oslo architects made.

  1. Ignoring existential risks to the State of Israel and its citizens.
     

  2. The Palestinian Authority is at its lowest point since 1993.
     

  3. It is riddled with corruption.
     

  4. It is losing its battle with the Hamas to gain control over the Palestinians.
     

  5. Arab leaders, including King Abdullah and Mubarak, have urged Arafat to retire.
     

  6. Violence and chaos dominate the areas controlled by the PA.
     

  7. Israel has been successful in and thwarting terrorist activities to the extent that terrorism is at its lowest level in four years.
     

  8. Resurrecting Arafat, who has been selected by the Quartet to oversee Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
     

  9. Prize for terror – reinforces the determination of the terrorist organizations to continue pursuing terror as a successful strategy.
     

  10. The threat of deepening the schisms within Israel, and intensifying inter-group hostilities hovers over the Disengagement plan.
     

  11. Renunciation of all red lines, as Sharon himself admitted at a meeting of the Foreign and Security committee on June 2.

There are no red lines. This is the program, and it is the one I shall have approved.7

Most telling, Sharon’s rationale for unilaterally withdrawing from the Gaza Strip was that the disengagement would head off international pressure for further concessions in Judea and Shomron. Here, too, PM Sharon’s assumptions have been proven to be unfounded. Rather than easing the pressure on Israel for further concessions, Sharon’s Disengagement plan has increased it.

The statement released at the conclusion of a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the European Union made this absolutely clear. The thrust of the statement was a reaffirmation of the Roadmap as the only viable peace plan.

The European Union recalls its established position, restated by the European Council of March 25-26, that the Union will not recognize any change to the pre-1967 borders other than those arrived at by agreement between the parties. The Union emphasises that no declared views on the possible shape of a final settlement can pre-empt the negotiation of that settlement. The European Union also notes that the refugee question and the manner in which the right of return may be realized is also a Final Status issue...

To encapsulate, the Disengagement plan is only the first step in total Israeli retreat to the June 1967 borders, with final status negotiations include the Palestinian “right of return”.

Conclusions

Beilin initiated the “peace” process, Peres pushed it forward, and, finally Rabin approved it. There is no doubt that the Israel of today, 11 1/2 years after Oslo, is an entirely different country than it was in September 1993, with developments spiraling out of control.

The Israeli representatives who were party to the Oslo Accords signed at an impressive ceremony on the lawn of the White House in September 1993 really believed that peace was at hand. However, the intransigence of the Palestinian negotiation teams, and the escalation of terrorism, convinced wide sectors in the Israeli public that the Palestinians did not want peace with Israel.

But not all sectors.

The radical Left transformed their devotion to the “Oslo process” into a religion. Suicide bombers, the bloody intifada, and even unambiguous declarations calling for the destruction of Israel, did no sway them in their beliefs. The reason for this is simple. A crucial dogma of their religion is the categorical imperative to abrogate the results of the 1967 war. This is the reason for their obsession with the settlements and the settlers. They are not interested in peace. They are only interested in evacuating the settlements, and all their indefatigable efforts are devoted to the attainment of this goal. From a historical perspective, they have, without a doubt, succeeded outstandingly well in disseminating their worldview.

Currently, in the international discourse revolving around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the settlements and the settlers are considered to be the only obstacle to peace in the Middle East, not the terrorist groups. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Roadmap, the Geneva Accord and the Disengagement plan all subordinate Israeli security concerns to the evacuation of the settlements.

All these “peace” plans present competing visions for achieving a permanent settlement in the Middle East. All of them revolve around the territorial dimension of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, each one proposing an alternative convergence point of Israeli and Palestinian demands.

However, the goalposts have been moved, and the crucial issue debated in the international arena today is the legitimacy of the State of Israel and its right to exist. It is now politically correct to question the existence of Israel. It is, therefore, not surprising that Israel is perceived by a majority of the Europeans and the Americans as the only threat to peace in the world.

Thus, the Oslo process, which was motivated by a vision of peace, has inexorably led to a vast deterioration in Israel’s status to the extent that the very existence of the State of Israel is under threat.

Endnotes

1

Boris Shusteff, The Disaster (Notes on the Roadmap), Freeman Center website, May, 5, 2003, <http://www.freeman.org/m_online/jun03/
shusteff.htm>.

2

Ibid.

3

Evelyn Gordon, “Withdraw Under Fire”, Jerusalem Post, December 22, 2003.

4

Ibid.

5

“Bush’s 2004 Middle East Vision Could Be Israel’s Nightmare”, DEBKAfile Special Analysis,  <http://www.debka.com/>, April 14, 2004.

6

Arutz 7,< www.a7.org.il>, May 24, 2004.

7

News First Class website, <www.nfc.co.il>, June 2, 2004.