Thirty years ago this week, US President Bill Clinton stood on the South Lawn of the White House, flanked by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and announced “a great occasion of history and hope.”
This hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians ultimately failed when the Oslo peace process stalled. But both sides know that the general terms of the agreement they sought to reach still represent the only realistic path to peace. The immediate challenge is to prevent this path from remaining closed forever.
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A story that focuses on that
The general terms of a Middle East peace agreement have been clear for 30 years. But do today’s Palestinian and Israeli leaders have the courage to persuade their peoples to compromise?
The latest rescue attempt is part of the only ongoing Arab-Israeli negotiations: a complex, U.S.-brokered attempt to secure a groundbreaking peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The substantive questions are difficult enough. But they are not the only obstacles. The Oslo process has taught a lesson: building peace means overcoming deep-seated resistance to the very idea of compromise in a conflict that is, for many on both sides, existential.
This means that leaders on both sides must be credible and willing to publicly advocate for compromise. With Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas weak and isolated and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leading the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, these conditions appear far from being met.
“Welcome to this great occasion of history and hope.”
Those words, spoken by former US President Bill Clinton on the South Lawn of the White House 30 years ago this week, did not sound overly exaggerated at the time. At his side ultimately stood the Middle East’s bitterest enemies: Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat.
And they committed themselves to embarking on the path to peace – the Oslo Process, so called because the declaration of principles that the leaders signed was drawn up in secret talks in Norway.
Why we wrote this
A story that focuses on that
The general terms of a Middle East peace agreement have been clear for 30 years. But do today’s Palestinian and Israeli leaders have the courage to persuade their peoples to compromise?
Mr. Clinton’s words now ring hollow. Israeli-Palestinian coexistence seems further away than ever before; Oslo’s vision of two sovereign states living side by side in peace is even more distant.
Yet both sides know that the general terms of the agreement, which they tried to reach in the seven difficult years after that sunny afternoon in 1993, still represent the only realistic path to peace.
The immediate challenge is to prevent this path from remaining closed forever.
The latest rescue attempt is part of the only ongoing Arab-Israeli negotiations: a complex, U.S.-brokered attempt to secure a groundbreaking peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu desperately wants a formal peace treaty with the leading Arab and Islamic power. But as head of the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history, he also wants the door to a two-state peace deal with the Palestinians to remain firmly closed.
Majdi Mohammed/AP
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An elderly man waves a Palestinian flag during a demonstration against a new Israeli settlement in the village of Kalandia near the West Bank city of Ramallah, January 20, 2023.
The Saudis and the Americans have told him, at least so far, that he can’t have it both ways.
But even if the door to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations remains open, a deeper question remains. Is peace itself, as promised in the White House, still possible?
After following this first failed trial from the beginning – and meeting leaders on both sides – my opinion is, “Yes… if only just.”
However, success will depend on whether Oslo learns its lessons.
The substantive questions are undeniably difficult: security; final boundaries; the growing number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, the planned core of a Palestinian state; Palestinians claim to have a “right of return” to present-day Israel; and the status of the holy city of Jerusalem.
But when the Oslo Accords failed, the outlines of a workable agreement were already emerging: the lion’s share of the West Bank as a Palestinian state, along with Gaza in Israel’s south; shared sovereignty over Jerusalem; a limited, symbolic return of Palestinian returnees – all to be stipulated in a formal, final peace agreement.
The biggest obstacles – and the real challenges for future peacemakers – lay on two other fronts: domestic politics and leadership.
Firstly, politics. Creating peace meant overcoming deep-seated resistance to the very idea of compromise in what for many on both sides was an existential conflict.
Eyal Warshavsky/AP
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Mr. Arafat (left) speaks in Arabic to reporters at a press conference in 1995 at the Erez checkpoint connecting Israel with Gaza, in the presence of Mr. Rabin (second from right).
In Israel, resistance grew with every step. And when Mr. Rabin agreed to a series of withdrawals from the West Bank in 1995, the onslaught grew even worse. The day before this agreement was passed in Parliament, the then opposition leader – Mr Netanyahu – gave a speech at a rally in the heart of Jerusalem. Some in the crowd shouted: “Death to Rabin!”
As Mr. Rabin left a peace rally in central Tel Aviv a few weeks later, he was shot by a young ultranationalist Israeli who opposed Oslo.
On the Palestinian side, Mr. Arafat faced no similarly obvious threat. However, there was resistance from hardline PLO members and increasingly influential Islamist political groups.
And this is where the question of leadership came into play: The Oslo Plan and all future peace efforts could only be successful if leaders with credibility at the grassroots were willing to make a sustained and public commitment to compromise.
Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat had credibility: the Israeli leader as a war veteran, former chief of staff and defense minister, and the PLO chief as a symbol of armed opposition to Israel.
Mr. Rabin, although initially reticent, began advocating for peace at the rally that ended in his death. Mr. Arafat never gave up his restraint. According to his moving words in the White House, he has never been a forceful advocate for peace.
Thirty years later, the disheartening news is that there are no signs of leaders on either side who are credible and willing to make peace.
Mr Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is increasingly isolated and many Palestinians view the Palestinian Authority he leads as deeply corrupt. Although Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right reputation gives him potential credibility, he has shown no interest in advocating for peace.
However, one thing is changing: a new generation of Palestinians and Israelis must face a new reality.
The number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased enormously since Oslo for the Palestinians: there are now more than half a million. Palestinians’ daily lives are increasingly constrained by Israeli restrictions and disrupted by violence, including attacks by settlers.
In Israel, the impetus is demographic. If the country abandons the idea of a negotiated peace and exercises permanent rule over the West Bank, Jews could eventually become a minority in such an expanded Israel. They would face the difficult decision of being a Jewish state or remaining a one-person, one-vote democracy.
It may be that at some point the logic of peace – regardless of leadership – becomes inexorable.
Source : www.csmonitor.com