The agreement restored international interest in the Palestinian issue.

And extremist thought has been working to abolish it.

In a special interview with Al-Quds, Fatah Central Committee member and Deputy Secretary-General Dr. Sabri Saidam presented a comprehensive analysis of the Oslo Accords on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of their signing, highlighting their failure to achieve the desired goal of establishing a just and comprehensive peace. Saidam attributed this failure to the United States’ bias towards Israel and the growing influence of extreme right-wing movements in the Israeli political scene, which undermined the chances of peace and decreased international support for the Palestinian cause. He also discussed the impact of the growing normalization between some Arab countries and Israel, considering that it contributed to weakening the Palestinian position. At the end of his talk, Saidam called for unifying the Palestinian ranks and escalating popular and diplomatic efforts to confront the occupation and achieve the aspirations of the Palestinian people for freedom and independence.

Bury the agreement

Q- Thirty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, which did not achieve their main goal of reaching a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where do you think they failed, and why?

The Declaration of Principles Agreement, later called the "Oslo Accords", came under international guarantees. The United States of America was supposed to be one of the honest and neutral mediators in dealing with this file, but it chose to stand with Israel and fully comply with the desires of successive governments that were rolling towards being extreme right-wing governments that reject the Oslo Accords.

Thus, the lack of neutrality of the United States of America, the political change in Israel, and the growth of the right-wing camp led to the birth of the state of violence that has become apparent in the Palestinian streets, as a result of which President Yasser Arafat was martyred, and Netanyahu came to power on several occasions to announce the death of the Oslo Accords, and thus the Oslo Accords died due to the influence of the Zionist right, and the growth of this racist mentality within Israeli society, and the loss of the term peace, which was one of the terms that was circulated in the Israeli political arena, but it disappeared completely until it became extinct in the successive rounds of Israeli elections that characterized the past few years, and the arrival and exacerbation of the rise of the right to power.

The dominance of American policy over the fate of Palestine

Q- Many claim that Oslo gave legitimacy to the Palestinian cause on the international stage. Do you think that this agreement helped raise the status of Palestine on the global level?

I believe that the Oslo Accords restored international interest in the Palestinian cause, and whetted the world’s appetite for providing the elements of development in Palestinian society to support this agreement, and to achieve the vision of the Palestinian people in self-determination and independence. However, it is clear that the Zionist school was rolling towards rejecting this agreement, reaching the recent recognition that it was the worst agreement signed by Israel. However, as I mentioned, the lack of neutrality and seriousness of the American administration in this matter led to the erosion of international support.

Also, add to that that the legitimacy of the countries that entered has been undermined by American control, such as the creation of the Quartet, while experience has proven that it was nothing but unilateral, and bypassed the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia, and did not submit to anyone but rather monopolized the Palestinian-Israeli political file, tipped the balance in favor of the Israelis, contributed to protecting their security, and adapted its policies to be compatible with the succession of governments in Israel, which accumulated this applied racism that led to the scene we are living today.

Displacement of Palestinians

Q- Looking back, do you think there were any important moments, or missed opportunities during the Oslo process that could have led to a different outcome today?

The American administration was not successful in managing this file, and it completely surrendered to Israel, and prostrated itself before the Zionist right, and allowed the exacerbation of this racism applied in the political arena, which led to the Zionist lobby’s complete control over the American decision-making factory, and its dominance over international decision-making factories, and thus it wasted many opportunities towards realizing the rights of the Palestinian people, and transforming Oslo into a bridge linking the Palestinians from the diaspora to the return to the homeland, and from the revolution to the state.

“Therefore, I believe that there were missed opportunities, there was a lack of commitment, and there was complete submission to the Zionist vision. I believe that the state of radical change in the mechanisms of action within the Zionist machine, from the attempt at positive political maneuvering that the Israeli left tried to impose, to the state of middle ground in which Israeli policy was lost, between wanting peace and building settlements and nibbling away at Arab land, all the way to the unprecedented tragic situation that we are living in today, which has imposed itself today on the mentality of Israeli control and consolidation, and is based on the concept of erasing the Palestinian identity, and completely displacing the Palestinians from the sea to the river.”