How Israel caused the Oslo Accords to fail

How Israel caused the Oslo Accords to fail

By Israel Harel

Politicians like to glorify events in which they starred. And even more so the extroverted people who cooked up the Oslo Accords exactly 15 years ago. But Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin and their partners from the academic world and media have chosen to remain silent in recent days, or to make vague statements that even they themselves don't seem to believe about the Oslo Accords remaining the only outline for peace. Even they, the wizards of propaganda, cannot explain, beyond the spin of the "only outline," how an initiative that ignited a war of terror that killed thousands of Jews and Arabs, turned Hamas into the main force in the Palestinian community and brought nationalistic fervor in the Israeli Palestinian community to new heights, is the "only outline for peace." After all, the truth is just the opposite: The "outline" gave rise to despair among both Jews and Arabs of the possibility of ever living in peace in this country, even within the Green Line. The Oslo Accords were doomed from the start, for one because the enthusiastic Israeli negotiators accepted the refusal of the Palestinians to recognize - and today, as it says in their "vision papers," even Israeli Arabs refuse to recognize - the State of Israel as a Jewish state and the national homeland of the Jewish people. But the impatient improvisers, who made light of the national ambitions of the Arabs and deluded themselves and us that this recognition, as Peres said, is not important, ignored the depth of the Arabs' nationalistic feelings while allowing them to waive their commitment to end the violence.

Para seguir leyendo: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1022178.html