The flaws of the Oslo Accords
"The United States has been a terrible 'sponsor' of the peace process.
It has succumbed to Israeli pressure on everything, abandoning the principle
of land for peace (no U.N. Resolution says anything about returning a tiny
percentage, as opposed to all of the land Israel seized in 1967), pushing
the lifeless Palestinian leadership into deeper and deeper holes to suit
Netanyahu's preposterous demands.
"The fact is that Palestinians are dramatically worse off than
they were before the Oslo process began. Their annual income is less than
half of what it was in 1992; they are unable to travel from place to place;
more of their land has been taken than ever before; more settlements exist;
and Jerusalem is practically lost...
"Every house demolishment, every expropriated dunum, every arrest
and torture, every barricade, every closure, every gesture of arrogance
and intended humiliation simply revives the past and reenacts Israel's
offenses against the Palestinian spirit, land, body politic. To speak about
peace in such a context is to try to reconcile the irreconcilable."Edward
Said in "The Progressive", March 1998
The roots of Intifada 2000
"The explosion of Palestinian anger last September 29 put an end
to the charade begun at Oslo seven years ago and labelled the 'peace process.'
In 1993 Palestinians, along with millions of people around the world, were
led to hope that Israel would withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza within
five years and that Palestinians would then be free to establish an independent
state. Meanwhile both sides would work out details of Israel's withdrawal
and come to an agreement on the status of Jerusalem, the future of Israeli
settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees.
"Because of the lopsided balance of power, negotiations went nowhere
and the Palestinians' hopes were never fulfilled. The Israelis, regardless
of which government was in power, quibbled over wording, demanded revisions
of what had previously been agreed to, then refused to abide by the new
agreements. Meanwhile successive governments were demolishing Palestinian
homes, taking over Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem for Jewish housing,
and seizing Palestinian land for new settlements. A massive new highway
network built after 1993 on confiscated Palestinian land isolates Palestinian
towns and villages from one another and from Jerusalem, forcing many Palestinians
to go through Israeli checkpoints just to get to the next town...
"According to President Clinton and most of the media, Prime Minister
Ehud Barak conceded at Camp David virtually everything the Palestinians
wanted, and Yasser Arafat threw away the opportunity for peace by rejecting
Barak's offer. In fact Arafat could not accept it. Barak, backed by Clinton,
wanted assurance of Israel's continued strategic control over the West
Bank and Gaza, including air space and borders, and insisted that Israel
retain permanent sovereignty over most of East Jerusalem, including Haram
Al-Sharif. This was a deal no Arab would accept.
"As the protests grew, army helicopters rocketed neighborhoods
in several Palestinian cities, destroying entire city blocks and causing
scores of casualties. Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian towns with their
guns turned toward the town. Armed Israeli civilians within the Green Line
rampaged through Arab neighborhoods destroying Arab property and shouting
"Death of Arabs'...Israeli police who were quick to use bullets against
Palestinian stone throwers failed to restrain the Israelis and instead
fired at Arabs trying to defend their homes. Two Arabs were killed.
"The uprising was undoubtedly fueled by the resentment caused by
years of daily abuse and humiliation under Israeli occupation. On September
6, a group of Israeli border police stopped three Palestinian workers as
they were returning home from Israel and, for no reason at all, subjected
them to 40 minutes of torture. The San Francisco Chronicle reported
on September 19 that the policemen punched the three men, slammed their
heads against a stone wall, forced them to swallow their own blood, and
cursed their mothers and sisters. The incident only came to light because
the policemen took photographs of themselves with their victims, holding
their heads by the hair like hunting trophies. Israeli human rights workers
said such beatings are a common occurance, but they are seldom reported."
Rachelle Marshall, "The Peace Process Ends in Protests and Blood",
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2000.
"Israel has failed the test"
"In the Oslo Agreements, Israel and the West put Palestinian leadership
to a test: In exchange for an Israeli promise to gradually dismantle the
mechanisms of the occupation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian
leadership promised to stop every act of violence and terror immediately.
For that purpose, all the apparatus for security coordination was created,
more and more Palestinian jails were built, and demonstrators were barred
from approaching the [Jewish] settlements.
"The two sides agreed on a period of five years for completion
of the new deployment and the negotiations on a final agreement. The Palestinian
leadership agreed again and again to extend its trial period...From their
perspective, Israel was also put to a test: Was Israel really giving up
its attitude of superiority and domination, built up in order to keep the
Palestinian people under its control?
"More than seven years have gone by and Israel has security and
administrative control of 61.2% of the West Bank and about 20% of the Gaza
Strip and security control over another 26.8% of the West Bank. This control
is what has enabled Israel to double the number of settlers in 10 years..and
to seal an entire nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in a network
of bypass roads meant for Jews only...
"Israel has failed the test. Palestinians control of 12% of the
West Bank does not mean that Israel has given up its attitude of superiority
and domination...The bloodbath that has been going on for three weeks is
the natural outcome of seven years of [Israeli] lying and deception."
Israeli journalist Amira Hass, "Israel Has Failed The Test,"
in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, 10/18/00.
Jimmy Carter's simple statement of the facts - November 2000
"An underlying reason that years of U.S. diplomacy have failed
and violence in the Middle East persists is that some Israeli leaders continue
to 'create facts' by building settlements in occupied territory...
"At Camp David in September 1978...the bilateral provisions led
to a comprehensive and lasting treaty between Egypt and Israel, made possible
at the last minute by Israel's agreement to remove its settlers from the
Sinai. But similar constraints concerning the status of the West Bank and
Gaza have not been honored, and have led to continuing confrontation and
violence...
"[Concerning UN Resolution 242] Our government's legal commitment
to support this well-balanced resolution has not changed...It was clear
that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were a direct violation
of this agreement and were, according to the long-stated American position,
both 'illegal and an obstacle to peace.' Accordingly, Prime Minister Begin
pledged that there would be no establishment of new settlements until after
the final peace negotiations were completed. But later, under Likud pressure,
he declined to honor this commitment...
"It is unlikely that real progress can be made...as long as Israel
insists on its settlement policy, illegal under international laws that
are supported by the United States and all other nations.
"There are many questions as we contine to seek an end to violence
in the Middle East, but there is no way to escape the vital one: Land or
peace?" Former President Jimmy Carter in The Washington Post, November
26, 2000.
Oslo and Intifada 2000 - continued
"After three weeks of virtual war in the Israeli occupied territories,
Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced a new plan to determine the final status
of the region. During these weeks, over 100 Palestinians were killed, including
30 children, often by 'excessive use of lethal force in circumstances in
which neither the lives of security forces nor others were in immminent
danger, resulting in unlawful killings,' Amnesty International concluded
in a detailed report that was scarcely mentioned in the US.
"Barak's plan...ensure(s) that useable land and resources (primarily
water) remain largely in Israeli hands while the population is administered
by a corrupt and brutal Palestinian Authority (PA), playing the role traditionally
assigned to indigenous collaborators under the several varieties of imperial
rule: the Black leadership of South Africa's Bantustans, to mention only
the most obvious analagoue...
"It is important to recall that the policies have not only been
proposed, but implemented, with the support of the U.S. That support has
been decisive since 1971, when Washington abandoned the basic diplomatic
framework that it had initiated (UN Security Council Resolution 242), then
pursued its unilateral rejection of Palestinian rights in the years that
followed, culminating in the 'Oslo process.' Since all of this has been
effectively vetoed from history in the US., it takles a little work to
discover the essential facts. They are not controversial, only evaded,"
Noam Chomsky, "Al-Aqsa Intifada", October 2000, on Znet, www.lbbs.org/meastwatch.
America - An impartial mediator?
"America's credibility as mediator had long been questioned by
Palestinians, and with reason. 'The Palestinians always complain that we
know the details of every proposal from the Americans before they do,'
one Israeli government source told The Independent recently. 'There's good
reason for that: we write them.'" Phil Reeves in "The Independent"
(U.K.), 10/9/2000
Lockstep U.S. Media tell (some of) the facts but not the truth
"Rarely do American journalists explore the ample reasons to believe
that the United States is part of the oft-decried cycle of violence. Nor,
in the first half of October, was there much media analysis of the fact
that the violence overwhelmingly struck at the Palestinian people.
"Within a period of days, several dozen Palestinians were killed
by heavily armed men in uniform - often described by CNN and other news
outlets as 'Israeli security forces'. Under the circumstances, it's a notably
benign-sounding term for an army that shoots down protestors.
"As for the rock-throwing Palestinians, I have never seen or heard
a single American news account describing them as 'pro democracy demonstrators.'
Yet that would be an appropriate way to refer to people who - after more
than three decades of living under occupation - are in the streets to demand
self determination.
"While Israeli soldiers and police, with their vastly superior
firepower, do most of the killing...American news stories highlighted the
specious ultimatums issued by Prime Minister Ehud Barak as he demanded
that Palestinians end the violence - while uniformed Israelis under his
authority continue to kill them...
"Like quite a few other Jewish Americans, I'm apalled by what Israel
is doing with U.S. Tax dollars. Meanwhile, as journalists go along to get
along, they diminish the humanity of us all." Norman Solomon, "Media
Spin Remains In Sync With Israeli Occupation," from FAIR's Media Beat,
October 14, 2000.
Intifada 2000 - An overview
"There is, in the final analysis, only one way to 'stop the violence,'
and that is to end the occupation. The desire for liberation will, eventually,
always bring an occupied people out into the streets, stones in hand, ready
to face the might of powerful armies, preferring to risk death than live
in bondage. This is not extreme nation.0 racism or religious fervor. It
is the need to be free...
"[Occupation] means a reality of unending violence. It means being
surrounded by an abusive foreign army that enforces a social system indistinguishable
from apartheid; confiscations of land that is then given to hundreds of
thousands of Israeli settlers in Jewish-only communities linked by Jewish
only roads; home demolitions; torture; cities cut off from each other,
closed down on a regular basis. It means living in a massive prison...
"Since 1967, there has been only one workable solution to the conflict.
The plan is articulated in U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which
sets up a two-part 'land for peace' solution. Part one holds that Israel
must withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967. Part two calls for
all states in the region to live in peace and security in those borders.
The Israeli obligation, withdrawal from the occupied territories, is utterly
unfulfilled." Hussein Ibish, communications director of the American-Arab
Anti Discrimination Committee, in the Los Angeles Times, October 18, 2000.
Albright stands the facts on their heads
"With the same deadpan, expressionless, emotionless, glazed look,
Madam Albright repeated: 'Those Palestinian rock throwers have placed Israel
undeer siege,' adding that the Israeli army is defending itself...[But]
It is Israel that is the belligerent occupant of Palestine (and not the
other way around) Israeli tanks and armored vehicles are surrounding Palestinian
villages, camps and cities (and not the other way around). Israeli (American-made)
Apache gunships are firing Lau and other missiles at Palestinian protestors
and homes (and not the other way around). It is Israel that is confiscating
Palestinian land and importing Jewish settlers to set up illegal armed
settlements in the heart of Palestinian territory (and not the other way
around). The settlers on the rampage in the West Bank and Israelis terrorizing
Palestinians in their own homes (and not the other way around)...Israel
is committing atrocities against the Palestinians with total impunity,
and yet you maintain, 'Israel is beseiged.'" Hanan Ashrawi, in
"The Progressive", December 2000
What Arafat was offered
"In American coverage of the recent Camp David meetings, the American
press obediently followed the Israeli and US government spin that while
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made courageous concessions for peace,
Palestinian unwillingness to compromise caused the meeting to fail.
"Never mind that Barak's 'courageous concessions' consisted of
allowing the Palestinians to have joint administrative responsibility over
a couple of remote Arab neighborhoods of Arab East Jerusalem - pathetic
crumbs tossed on the floor which Arafat was expected to gratefully pick
up." American Jewish reporter, Eduardo Cohen, from "What Americans
Need to Know - But Probably Won't Be Told - To understand Palestinian Rage"
from Palestine Media Watch, www.pmwatch.org
What Arafat was offered - continued
"Barak appears to be asking for only 10% of the occupied territories.
In reality, it's closer to 30%, taking into account the territories he
wants to annex in the Jerusalem area and place under his "security
control" in the Jordan Valley. But even worse, in the map submitted
to the Palestinians, these percentage points cut the country up from East
to West and from North to South, so that the Palestinian state will consist
of groups of islands, each surrounded by Israeli settlers and soldiers.
"World opinion is always on the side of the underdog. In this fight,
we are Goliath and they are David. In the eyes of the world [outside the
US], the Palestinians are fighting a war of liberation against a foreign
occupation. We are in their territory, not they on ours. We are the occupiers,
they are the victims. This is the objective situation, and no minister
of propaganda can change that." Israeli peace activist. Uri Avnery,
"12 Conventional Lies About the Palestine-Israeli Conflict" from
Palestine Media Watch, www.pmwatch.org.
An Israeli's "Open Letter to a Friend In Peace Now"
"It has been seven years exactly since I wrote my last letter to
you.It was the day after the signing of the Oslo Accords, when you invited
me to dance with you in Menorah Square...Permit me to quote for you a few
passages from that old letter.
"'You danced in the square because you were happy about this peace.
Not just plain peace, but a blend of peace,security, Palestinian chest-beating
over sins committed (renunciation of terrorism), and far-reaching concessions
by the other side. A peace that you can be proud of. A peace - so you boast
- for which we are giving nothing ("Just a tiny bit," whispers
the prime minister) and gaining much; recognition, greater security, a
halt to the Intifada, renunciation of terrorism, being relieved of the
Arabs and more. You are happy about this peace, and in its honor you invite
me to dance with you. No thank you...You got rid of Gaza, you separated
Israelis from Palestinians, you gave them the dirty work and you didn't
even promise withdrawal or a real state. Could peace possibly be bought
more cheaply?"
"'I, by contrast, see peace as an end and not merely as a means,
and call for getting out of the Occupied Territories because we have nothing
to be there for, even if the occupation did not cost us even one victim
or one cent; and I am against shooting children - and adults - simply because
it is forbidden to shoot children or ordionary civilians.'
"Since the writing of these lines you celebrated the peace and
you became fat and prosperous. The repeated and varied violations of the
agreements did not move you, not to speak of any change in our culture
of war and occupation, the arrogant tone of those negotiating in our name
and their attempts to demand more and more in exchange for less and less...
"What is there to be confused about? A conquering army is using
tanks and helicopter gunships to disperse demonstrations. What is so hard
to understand here?...There is an occupation and there is a struggle against
the occupation. There are demonstrators and there is an army that has received
orders to shed their blood. And don't come to me with the story of the
rifles, Your glorious war record qualifies you to understand that even
CNN reporters understand, that those rifles do not endanger either Israel
or the soldiers if they don't get too close...
"[From 1993 letter]"peace is a tango that takes two equal
partners dancing in unity; it is not a dance of one who drags around his
partner at will...In your dance of peace you have no partners, only enemies.
For your peace is his occupation, your success is his loss...Peace is still
far away because peace demands honesty, because peace demands equality.
You want to force them to lie, you want of them a peace of surrender, you
are celebrating a peace of master and slave. Under such conditions there
will perhaps be peace-and-quiet, but Peace, no. Not until you open your
eyes and your heart. Not until we are ready for a peace of partnership
and equality." Michael (Mikado) Warschawski, "The Party Is
Over: An Open Letter to a Friend In Peace Now,", from Znet, www.lbbs.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html
"Barak promised peace and brought war, and not by accident."
"(Barak) promised peace and brought war, and not by accident. While
speaking about peace, he enlarged the settlements. Cut the Palestinian
territories into pieces by 'by-pass' roads. Confiscated lands. Demolished
homes. Uprooted trees. Paralyzed the Palestinian economy..Conducted negotiations
in which he tried to dictate to the Palestinians a peace that amounts to
capitulation. Was not satisfied with the fact that by accepting the Green
Line, the Palestinians had already given up 78% of their historic homeland.
Demanded the annexation of 'settlement blocs" and pretended that they
amount only to 3% of the territory, while in fact he meant more than 20%
would remain under Israeli control. Wanted to coerce the Palestinians to
accept a 'state' cut off from all its neighbors and composed of several
enclaves isolated from each other, each surrounded by Israeli settlers
and soldiers...Boasts publicly that he has not given back to the Palestinians
one inch of territory...When the intifada broke out, sent snipers to shoot,
in cold blood from a distance, hundreds of unarmed demonstrators, adults
and children. Blockaded each village and town separately, bringing them
to the verge of starvation, in order to get them to surrender. Bombarded
neighborhoods. Started a policy of mafia-style 'liquidations', causing
an inevitable escalation of the violence." Israeli peace activist,
Uri Avnery, February 3, 2001, www.gush-shalom.org
A 'benign' occupation?
"Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they are running
an 'enlightened' or 'benign' occupation, qualitatively different from other
military occupations the world has seen. The truth was radically different.
Like all occupations, Israel's was founded on brute force, repression and
fear, collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily
intimidation, humiliation and manipulation." Israeli historian,
Benny Morris, "Righteous Victims."
What "closure" means
"Just an hour's drive from Jerusalem, a cruel drama has been underway
for the past five months, the likes of which have not been seen since the
early days of the Israeli occupation, but the majority of Israelis are
taking absolutely no interest in it. The iron grip of the closure in its
new format is increasingly strangling a population of 2.8 million people,
yet no one is saying a word. . .
"It has to be said starkly and simply: There has never been a closure
like this there, in the land of barriers and closure. In the worst of times
of the previous Intifada, when the iDF was in eveÄr and curfew reigned
supreme, there was not a situation in which a whole people was jailed without
a trial and without the right of appeal.
"Israel has split the West Bank by means of hundreds of trenches,
dirt ramparts and concrete cubes which have been placed at the entrance
to most of the towns and villages. No one enters and no one leaves, not
those who are pregnant and not those who are dying. There isn't even a
soldier with whom one can plead and beg. A network of bizarre Burma roads
that break through the encirclement are sending an entire people along
muddy, rocky routes, with the situation aggravated by a substantial risk
of getting caught or getting shot by soldiers who often open fire on the
desperate travelers. . .
"Never before has there been distress and suffering on this scale
among the Palestinians in the territories. They will engender unprecendented
despair and ultimately they will spark violence more cruel and painful
than anything seen so far. . . This is the point: the horrific distress
of the Palestinians because of the present closure will quickly turn into
the distress of the Israelis. . . The current siege, a shamefully appalling
operation, must be lifted quickly. This must not be made conditional on
the cessation of the violence, because the siege itself is the most effective
spur to violence." Israeli writer, Gideon Levy, in Ha aretz, March
4, 2001