Thirty Years After Oslo, The Approach Still Stands

This September marks the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accord, known as the Declaration of Principles Agreement on Transitional Self-Government Arrangements, which was followed by other complementary or detailed agreements, most notably the Paris Economic Protocol in April 1994, and then the Oslo II Agreement, which was signed two years after the first in Taba, Egypt, then in Washington. The most prominent results of the signing of the Oslo Accords was the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and the return of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership, along with tens of thousands of its cadres, members and their families, to homeland.

But the real, tangible result that every Palestinian knows is that the occupation continues to perpetuate and impose its sway over all Palestinians, controlling their lives, movement, and breathing. As for the hopes that were revived, promoted, and amplified with the signing of the agreement, such as turning the Gaza Strip into the Singapore of the Middle East, they were soon dispelled. With the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and then the right-wing, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power in 1996. The disappointment/disaster was completed with the adoption of the Israeli Labor Party, under the leadership of Ehud Barak, the vision of the Israeli right to perpetuate the occupation, and to do everything that would undermine the chances of establishing an independent Palestinian state, expanding settlements, and Judaizing Jerusalem and make limited administrative self-rule a ceiling for the aspirations of the Palestinians while strengthening their dependence on Israel.

Was the fate of conflict and peace dependent on the life of one person named Yitzhak Rabin, and when the Israeli extremist right-wing forces assassinated him, Oslo collapsed, and that revealed the true face of Israel, or was Oslo a trap set tightly by Israel and lured into it by the leadership, along with the entire Palestinian national movement? Or was it a gamble and a bet on the Labor Party's serious desire for peace, or was it a conscious choice that the Palestinian leadership accepted, fully aware of the fatal gaps in the agreement, but it agreed to it, being forced to avoid what is worse for it, i.e. the option to write off and get out of the equation, especially since the leadership Before the agreement, and coinciding with the results of the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was subjected to an Arab and international political and financial blockade.

Perhaps some of the questions raised are within the competence of historians and researchers, whose mission requires rigorous scientific studies far from passion, emotions, and prejudices. Others are answered by the reality clearly, which we see now and feel from our daily follow-up to the current Israeli project to resolve the conflict and liquidate the national rights of the Palestinian people. There is nothing new in saying that all the loopholes and shortcomings that the Oslo agreement contained in its texts and applications were clear and were accurately diagnosed by the opposition forces and critics of the agreement, especially since the agreement did not refer in any way to the existence of the occupation and did not clearly touch on the goal of the settlement process and negotiations to get rid of it. The occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and postponed the most important issues, which are Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, the state and borders, and the issue of water was added to it in an Israeli design that is not devoid of expansionist connotations, while the issue of prisoners was classified within what was called confidence-building measures.

At the beginning of the negotiations and agreements, Israel showed an artificial and exaggerated strictness towards formal and protocol issues, such as the naming of the Palestinian Council, and the status of the president. But later, it tolerated this matter and lavished on the Palestinians what they wanted of prestige and prestige supplies, especially the privileges of senior officials such as cards, freedom of movement, titles, and facilities for family reunification, in return for being strict on real sovereign issues such as the activities of the Authority in Jerusalem and areas classified (C) or the general conditions of the people. And what hundreds of thousands of people are subjected to daily from the forms of abuse and humiliation at the checkpoints and roads that connect the governorates.

With the exception of individual and personal testimonies given by some of those who participated in the preparation of the Oslo Accords and then left their positions, there was no serious and responsible review of what happened, a review that would lead to drawing lessons and lessons and changing the methods of work and leadership. On the contrary, the forces that criticized, attacked, and opposed Oslo have adapted over time to Oslo and its applications. Some of them participated in the PA governments, and most of them (to be precise, all except the Jihad Movement) participated in the legislative council elections arising from the PA and Oslo, and they maintained their criticism of the Oslo approach. And the method of making the decision, but the leaders of these parties do not object, rather they are struggling, in order to obtain the privileges provided by the Oslo Accord to some leaders such as very important personal cards, and freedom of movement under security coordination while tens of thousands of Palestinians are banned from travel, and more than five thousand militants And activists are languishing in prisons, and dozens of them have spent more than a quarter of a century in prison.

There is a painful irony in this painful scene, which is that those who led the Palestinian people in the 1960s and 1970s and then glorified the armed struggle and the long-term popular war of liberation, are themselves, except for whom God chose to be next to him, who led the next stages of the ten-point program to Oslo, to our dusty  day. Our masters in ignorance are our masters in Islam, and they are also our masters in the unipolar phase and the multipolar world that is now being created with the rise of the Chinese and Indian giants and Saudi Arabia’s search for a position worthy of it in this world. There is no review, evaluation, or accountability, even though the Oslo Accord was not just a text on which we agree or disagree. Rather, it is an approach based on exclusivity of the decision and the absence of a national partnership, so shall we take a lesson?