I doubt there is anyone outside of the Haaretz or New York Times editorial staffs who thinks that Oslo was a good idea. I actually had a liberal friend tell me “It (Oslo) would have worked out if Arafat were not such a murderer” (I kid you not he actually said that). Yet we still hear the mantra of the so called “peace process”. That is bogus – peace is not a process. Peace between enemies comes about
1. When one party can no longer stand the physical and economic cost of war
2. One party is being bludgeoned to death.
In 1992 – 93 Israel’s standard in the world was pretty high because their Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir (a tough little inflexible bastard) was not interested in being liked. During those years, enemies or previously unfriendly nations such as China, India, Vietnam, the USSR, Spain, (even the Vatican), all established full diplomatic relations with her. When a nation acts in its own interests and does not worry Hamlet-like over whether it will be popular in the salons of the Washington Post – good things usually happen for them. Compare and contrast the Israel of 1991 – 93 with the Israel of the Olmert years – confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head. The second intifada at one point (Spring of 2002) seemed to be on the verge of bringing Israel to its knees. However the naysayers who said that the security fence would never work and that there is no military solution to Palestinian terrorism, only diplomacy and negotiations, (i.e. surrender and appeasement) were again proven wrong.
by Evelyn Gordon
When the Oslo process began in 1993, one benefit its adherents promised was a significant improvement in Israel’s international standing. And initially, it seemed as if that promise would be kept: 37 countries soon established or renewed diplomatic relations with Israel; a peace treaty was signed with Jordan; five other Arab states opened lower-level relations.
But 16 years later, it is clear that this initial boost was illusory. Not only is Israel’s standing no better than it was prior to the famous handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on the White House Lawn in September 1993, it has fallen to an unprecedented low. Efforts to boycott and divest from Israel are gaining strength throughout the West, among groups as diverse as British academics, Canadian labor unions, the Norwegian government’s investment fund, and American churches. Israeli military operations routinely spark huge protests worldwide, often featuring anti-Semitic slogans. References to Israel as an apartheid state have become so commonplace that even a former president of Israel’s closest ally, the United States, had no qualms about using the term in the title of his 2007 book on Israel. European polls repeatedly deem Israel the greatest threat to world peace, greater even than such beacons of tranquility and democracy as Iran and North Korea. Courts in several European countries, including Belgium, Britain, and Spain, have seriously considered indicting Israeli officials for war crimes (though none has actually yet done so). And in October, when the United Nations Human Rights Council overwhelmingly endorsed a report that advocated hauling Israel before the International Criminal Court on war-crimes charges, even many of Jerusalem’s supposed allies refused to vote against the measure. In academic and media circles, it has even become acceptable to question Israel’s very right to exist—something never asked about any other state in the world. None of these developments was imaginable back in the days when Israel refused to talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization, had yet to withdraw from an inch of “Palestinian” land, and had not evacuated a single settlement.
Yet even today, conventional wisdom, including in Israel, continues to assert that Israel’s international standing depends on its willingness to advance the “peace process.” That invites an obvious question: if so, why has Israel’s reputation fallen so low despite its numerous concessions for peace since 1993?
The answer is unpleasant to contemplate, but the mounting evidence makes it inescapable: Israel’s standing has declined so precipitously not despite Oslo but because of Oslo. It was Israel’s very willingness to make concessions for the sake of peace that has produced its current near-pariah status.
Tags: Islamo-Imperialism
