Why Did Rabin Fall for the Oslo Process? by Efraim Karsh
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Why Did Rabin Fall for the Oslo Process? by Efraim Karsh recisely two decades after the failure by the Golda Meir government to identify a willing Arab peace partner triggered the devastating 1973 Yom P Kippur war, another Labor government wrought a far worse catastrophe by substituting an unreconstructed terror organization committed to Israel’s destruction for a willing peace part- ner. Instead of ending the Palestinian-Israeli con- flict, the “Oslo peace process” between Israel and the Palestine Liber- ation Organization (PLO) created an ineradicable terror entity on Israel’s doorstep that has mur- dered some 1,600 Israelis, rained thousands of rockets and missiles on the country’s population centers, and toiled tire- lessly to delegitimize the (Left to right): PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres, and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin accept the 1994 Nobel right of the Jewish state to Peace prize in Oslo. Instead of peace, two of Israel’s foremost security exist. and foreign policy veterans created an ineradicable terror entity on How did this come to Israel’s doorstep. pass? Why did two of Israel’s foremost security and foreign policy veterans—Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres—lead into Israel what a prominent PLO official candidly described as a Trojan horse designed to promote the organization’s strategic goal: “Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea”—that is, a Palestine in place of the state of Israel?1 1 Faisal Husseini interview, al-Arabi (Cairo), June 24, 2000. MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Fall 2018 Karsh: Oslo’s Failure / 1 Eyes Wide Shut or the negotiating team about the final- PLO chairman Yasser Arafat was a status solution,” Deputy Foreign Minister diehard man of war who made violence, Yossi Beilin, Peres’s longtime protégé and dislocation, and mayhem the defining Oslo’s chief architect told an inquiring characteristics of his career. In 1970, he reporter. nearly brought about the destruction of “I cannot understand,” demurred the Jordan. Five years later, he helped trigger the astounded reporter. “In 1992, a government horrendous Lebanese civil war, one of the was elected. In 1993, you initiated the Oslo bloodiest conflicts in modern Middle Eastern process. Yet at no stage you asked yourselves history, which raged for more than a decade where all this was headed?” and claimed hundreds of thousands of “No.” innocent lives. In 1990-91, he supported the “And yet, when the cabinet approved the brutalization of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, Oslo accord in a quick and superficial at an exorbitant cost to the Palestinians living session, with almost no discussion, weren’t there, thousands of whom were murdered in you disturbed?” revenge attacks while hundreds of thousands “It was amazing. Amazing. For dozens more were expelled after Kuwait’s liberation. of years, I had been talking to these people, In between these disasters, Arafat made the and they had been opposing, like lions, my Palestinian national movement synonymous various proposals regarding [negotiations with violence and turned the PLO into one with] the PLO … Then all of a sudden Rabin of the world’s most murderous terror brings an agreement with the PLO and all are 2 organizations with the overarching goal of in favor.” bringing about Israel’s demise. This glaring failure to deliberate the How, then, did the Rabin government envisaged outcome of the most ambitious come to believe in the instantaneous trans- peace effort vis-à-vis the Palestinians in formation of the man and his organization Israel’s history did not prevent Peres from into dedicated agents of peace? In Northern applauding Oslo, not only as the end of the Ireland, the decommissioning of weapons by Palestinian-Israeli conflict but also as the all paramilitary groups was a prerequisite to harbinger of a “New Middle East” that will the peace process. In the Oslo process, the serve as “a spiritual and cultural focal point Israeli government viewed the arming of for the entire world”: thousands of (hopefully reformed) terrorists A Middle East without wars, and their entrustment with enforcing law and without enemies, without ballistic order throughout the West Bank and Gaza as missiles, without nuclear warheads. the key to peace and security. Where did this A Middle East in which men, incredible delusion originate? goods, and services can move From nowhere, it would seem. There freely without the need for customs were no ultimate goals set for the Oslo clearance and police licenses … A negotiating team, no roadmap to follow. Middle East where living standards There were no serious discussions over the direction of the process, not even awareness among the negotiators and their superiors of each other’s vision of peace. “I don’t remember a single serious, penetrating dis- 2 Yossi Beilin, interview with Ari Shavit, Haaretz cussion within the Labor Party, the cabinet, Weekly Magazine, Mar. 7, 1997. MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Fall 2018 Karsh: Oslo’s Failure / 2 are in no way because, for peace, we inferior to those in Peres went out of his way must produce a partner.”5 the world’s most to deny, dilute, and whitewash Peres fully lived up advanced countries the countless Palestinian to this principle, going … in which no violations of the accords. out of his way to deny, hostile borders bring dilute, and whitewash death, hunger, and despair … A Middle East that is the countless Palestinian not a killing field but a field of viollations of the accords, or indeed— creativity and growth.3 anything that alluded to the PLO’s continued commitment to Israel’s destruction. “The In Peres’s view, by joining the Oslo right of return is in my view an Arab dream process, Arafat and the PLO had become that is bound to remain a dream,” he partners to a momentous historical odyssey; dismissed the Palestinian euphemism for and as long as this partnership remained Israel’s destruction through demographic intact, its success was a foregone conclusion: subversion as llate as September 2001, after the issue had been instrumental in wrecking I think what is really important for both the July 2000 Camp David summit and a peace process is the creation of a Preesident Clinton’s proposed peace plan partner, more than a plan [b]ecause several months later. “I thought then, just as I plans don’t create partners, but if think today, that one can solve problems you have a partner, then you withhout giving up the dreams.”6 negotiate a plan. …When I was thinking about the peace process, I Peres was similarly delusional about the knew in my heart that the greatest PLO’s failure to abolish the clauses in the problem is how to transform Arafat Palestinian covenant calling for Israel’s from the most hated gentleman in desstruction, as required by the Oslo accords. this country, and himself with an Thus, for example, when the speaker of the array of very strange ideas, into a Palestinian National Council (PNC), the partner that we can sit with, and PLO’s semi-parliament, conditioned the make him become acceptaba le to covenant’s amendment on fresh Israeli our people— maybe not beloved concessions, Peres dismissed his demands 4 buut at least accepted. out of hand. “We did not sign an agreement with the PNC speaker. We signed it with the But what if the would-be partner failed PLO leadershiip and it is incumbent upon to act out the role ascribed to him? What them to ensure its implementation,” he if his “array of very strange ideas” proved arguued, as if it were not the PNC that had impermeable to change? Peres’ response: adopted the covenant in the first place in “We close our eyes. We don’t criticize 1964, revised it in 1968, and was the only body legally authorized to execute the requuired amendments. Small wonder that when Arafat informed him on May 4, 1996, 3 “The Nobel Peace Prize 1994. Shimon Peres - Nobel Lecture,” Nobleprize.org; Shimon Peres, The New Middle East (Shaftesbury: Element, 1993). 5 Shimon Peres, letter to the editor, The Jerusalem Post, May 21, 1996. 4 Connie Bruck, “The Wounds of Peace,” The New Yorkere , Oct. 14, 1996. 6 Maariv (Tel Aviv), Sept. 25, 2001. MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY Fall 2018 Karsh: Oslo’s Failure / 3 that the covenant had been amended, Peres instantaneously lauded the alleged move as “the most important event in the Middle East in a hundred years” though it quickly transpired that no such amendment had actually taken place.7 Indeed, the covenant, with its plethora of articles calling for Israel’s destruction, stands unrevised to this very day. When, in May 1994, Arafat told a closed meeting of Muslim leaders in Johannesburg that the Oslo accords were a temporary arrangement designed to bring about Israel’s eventual demise, urging them to help spark a pan-Muslim jihad against Israel, Peres excused the comments as reflecting Arafat’s tortuous adjustment to the new reality while In May 1994, Arafat told a closed meeting of Muslim Beilin brushed the remarks off as “silly leaders that the Oslo accords were a temporary words.” arrangement designed to bring about Israel’s eventual Beilin was no less dismissive of demise, urging them to spark a pan-Muslim jihad Arafat’s insistence on Jerusalem as against Israel. capital of the prospective Palestinian state. “The Palestinians understand that we cannot give up [Israel’s sovereignty over That Beilin seemed to believe these the city],” he argued. “In the end, they will incredible assertions was evidenced by his have to face the difficult dilemma, from their chilling prediction that “the greatest