{"id":118674,"date":"2018-09-17T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=118674"},"modified":"2018-09-16T12:21:37","modified_gmt":"2018-09-16T11:21:37","slug":"the-veiled-danger-of-the-dead-oslo-accords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/09\/the-veiled-danger-of-the-dead-oslo-accords\/","title":{"rendered":"The Veiled Danger of the \u2018Dead\u2019 Oslo Accords"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, U.S. president Bill Clinton, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the signing of the Oslo Accord. (Photo: via MEMO)<\/p><\/div>\n

12 Sep 2018 – <\/em>Yossi Beilin is back. This unrepentant Israeli \u2018peacemaker\u2019 is like the mythical phoenix, continually resurrecting from its ashes. In a\u00a0recent article<\/a>\u00a0in Al-Monitor, Beilin wrote in support of the idea of a confederation between Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n

A confederation \u201ccould prevent the need to evacuate settlers and allow those interested to live in Palestine as Israeli citizens, just as a similar number of Palestinian citizens could live in Israel,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Bizarrely, Beilin is promoting a version of an idea that was\u00a0pushed<\/a>\u00a0by Israel\u2019s extremist Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.<\/p>\n

The difference between Beilin and Lieberman is in how we choose to perceive them: the former was the godfather of the Oslo Accords 25 years ago, a well-known political \u2018dove\u2019 and the former Chairman of the \u2018left-leaning\u2019 Meretz party. Lieberman, on the other hand, is purportedly the exact opposite.<\/p>\n

When Lieberman suggested population transfer and territorial swaps, all hell broke loose. When Beilin did it, his efforts were perceived as an honest attempt at reviving the dormant \u2018peace process.\u2019<\/p>\n

That is the brilliance of Beilin, his followers and the whole \u2018peace process\u2019 that culminated in the Oslo Accords and the famous White House handshake between the late PLO Chairman, Yasser Arafat, and the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in September 1993. They successfully branded this hideous infringement on international law as a sincere effort at achieving peace between two conflicting parties.<\/p>\n

The Donald Trump Administration has long surpassed Oslo and its tired clich\u00e9s of \u2018peace process\u2019, \u2018painful compromises\u2019 and \u2018trust building\u2019 exercises, etc., as it is promoting something else entirely, the so-called \u2018Deal of the Century\u2019.<\/p>\n

But Oslo will not go away. It remains a problem because the intellectual foundation that led to its conception is still firmly in place \u2013 where only Israel matters and the aspirations of the Palestinian people are still inconsequential.<\/p>\n

While Beilin is no longer an influential politician, there are many Yossi Beilins who are still lurking, playing the role of \u2018peacemakers<\/a>\u2018, meeting behind closed doors, on the sideline of conferences, offering their services as interlocutors, wheelers and dealers, and saviors.<\/p>\n

The late Palestinian Professor, Edward Said, was not prophesying when he warned of the disastrous future consequences of Oslo as it was being signed. He was dismissed by mainstream media and pundits as radical, lumped with the other \u2018enemies of peace\u2019 on \u2018both sides\u2019. But, he, like many other Palestinians, was right.<\/p>\n

\u201cLabor and Likud leaders alike made no secret of the fact that Oslo was designed to segregate the Palestinians in noncontiguous, economically unviable enclaves, surrounded by Israeli-controlled borders, with settlements and settlement roads punctuating and essentially violating the territories\u2019 integrity,\u201d\u00a0he wrote<\/a>\u00a0in the Nation.<\/p>\n

The colonization of Palestine, for the first time, was accelerating with the consent of the Palestinian leadership. The PLO was turned into a local body with the inception of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. The rights of millions of Palestinian refugees in the diaspora were relegated. The West Bank was divided into areas A, B, and C, each governed by different rules, mostly under the control of the Israeli military.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Palestinian revolution\u2019 turned into an agonizing process of \u2018state-building\u2019, but without state or even contiguous territories. Palestinians who rejected the horrific outcomes of Oslo \u2013 protracted expansion of Jewish colonies, continued violent Occupation, normalized through \u2018security coordination\u2019 between Israel and the PA \u2013 were often\u00a0abused<\/a>\u00a0and deemed extremists.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, successive US administrations continued to fund and defend Israel, unconcerned about its self-tailored job title as the \u2018honest peace broker.\u2019<\/p>\n

The PA played along because the perks were far too lucrative to be abandoned on principle. A new class of Palestinians had risen, dependent on Oslo for its wealth and affluence.<\/p>\n

Even when the Trump Administration cut off the Palestinian Refugees Agency, UNRWA, of all funds, and scrapped the $200 million in humanitarian aid to the PA, the US still\u00a0released<\/a>\u00a061 million dollars to the PA to maintain its \u2018security cooperation\u2019 with Israel. \u2018Israel\u2019s security\u2019 is just too sacred a bond to be broken.<\/p>\n

This is why Oslo remains dangerous. It is not the agreement itself that matters, but the mindset behind it \u2013 the political and diplomatic discourse that is wholly manufactured to serve Israel exclusively.<\/p>\n

In January 2017, Daniel Pipes of the pro-Israel Middle East Forum came up with what seemed like a\u00a0puerile idea<\/a>:\u00a0a \u2018way to peace\u2019 between Israel and the Palestinians, based on the simple declaration that Israel has won.<\/p>\n

The new strategy requires little by way of negotiations. It merely entails that Israel declares \u2018victory\u2019, which Pipes defined as \u201cimposing one\u2019s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions.\u2019<\/p>\n

As unconscionable as Pipes\u2019 logic was, a few months later, Congressional Republicans in the US launched the \u201cIsrael Victory Caucus.\u201d The co-Chair of the Caucus, Rep. Bill Johnson, \u2018predicted<\/a>\u2019 in April 2017 that Trump would soon be heading to Israel to announce the relocation of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Since then, the US is following a blueprint of a strategy in which the US advances Israel\u2019s \u2018victory\u2019 while imposing conditions of surrender on defeated Palestinians. Despite its more diplomatic and legal language, that was also the essence of Oslo.<\/p>\n

Trump, to the satisfaction of Israel\u2019s right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may think that he has single-handedly\u00a0destroyed<\/a>\u00a0the Oslo Accords or whatever remained of it. However, judging by his words and actions, Trump has\u00a0indicated<\/a>\u00a0that the spirit of Oslo remains alive: the bribes, the bullying and the fighting for that coveted and final Israeli \u2018victory.\u2019<\/p>\n

Oslo is not a specific legal document that can be implemented or rejected. It is a spectrum in which the likes of Beilin, Lieberman, and Pipes have more in common than they may think, and in which the fate of the Palestinian people is left to inept leaders, incapable of thinking outside the permissible space allocated to them by the Israelis and the Americans.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Abbas and his Authority are still reveling at the expense of the space that is Oslo, not the \u2018accords\u2019 \u2013 provisions, stipulations and heaps of paper \u2013 but the corrupt culture \u2013 money, perks and unmitigated defeat.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of <\/em>Palestine Chronicle. He has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. Baroud is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. His books include <\/em>Searching Jenin, <\/em>The Second Palestinian Intifada, and <\/em>My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza\u2019s Untold Story. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story<\/a> (Pluto Press, London, 2018). His website:<\/em> www.ramzybaroud.net<\/a>. <\/em>Email: <\/em>info@ramzybaroud.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ramzybaroud.net<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Sep 2018 – Yossi Beilin is back. This unrepentant Israeli \u2018peacemaker\u2019 is like the mythical phoenix, continually resurrecting from its ashes. In a recent article in Al-Monitor, Beilin wrote in support of the idea of a confederation between Israel and Palestine. Bizarrely, Beilin is promoting a version of an idea that was pushed by Israel\u2019s extremist Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":57265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}