When I hear right-wing Israelis shout “Indict the Oslo Criminals!” I shudder. Not because ofthe inherent falsification, but because of the sound of the words.
This slogan is a virtual (and perhaps conscious) copy of the slogan used by the Nazis in theirsuccessful campaign to undermine the Weimar republic. Their throats were hoarse fromshouting “Indict the November Criminals!”
The “November Criminals” were the German statesmen who, in November 1918, signed thearmistice that ended World War I. After four years of valiant fighting, the German army wasexhausted. The Kaiser had fled. The vaunted General Staff was in despair. The generals beggedthe statesmen to sign the capitulation, in order to save what could be saved.
But according to Nazi legend, the very opposite had happened. The statesmen who had signed thearmistice were traitors. They had stuck a knife into the back of the victorious army. The Nazipropaganda wizard, Joseph Goebbels, taught his pupils that by constant repetition one canturn a lie into truth, and the bigger the lie, the easier it is to get it accepted.
The incitement against the “Novemberverbrecher” (November criminals) succeeded. Theywere murdered, and the Nazis became a democratically elected government.
The campaign against the “Oslo Criminals” was successful, too. Rabin was murdered and theincitement assumes ever-growing dimensions. By this means, the extreme rightwing and thesettlers hope to take over the state. According to the well-known recipe, they repeat thehistoric lie endlessly, so that by now it is widely accepted as gospel truth. The media repeatit as a self-evident fact. The “left”, or what is left of the “left”, looks on as if hypnotized,unable to respond.
The historic truth is, of course, that it’s not the creators of the Oslo agreement who havecaused a historic disaster, but its murderers. If there are “Oslo criminals”‘ they are thepeople who have undermined the agreement from its inception, prevented its implementationand, by a stubborn sabotage campaign, succeeded in derailing it.
As a basis for peace, the Oslo agreement was not a good agreement. It could not be good, becausethe objective circumstances were bad. The balance of power between Israel and thePalestinians was something like 1000:1. According to all criteria – political, military,economic, technological and what not – Israel enjoyed an immense superiority. The success ofthe first intifada did somewhat redress the imbalance and make a compromise easier, but thesituation was still far from a reasonable balance. Arafat was not so wrong when he told hispeople that this was “the best agreement possible in the worst circumstances.”
Considering this, the Oslo agreement was better than it might have been. It enabled anenormous achievement: the recognition of the State of Israel by the Palestinian people, andthe recognition of the Palestinian people and its liberation organization by the State ofIsrael. Until then, each side had denied the very existence of the other. This mutualrecognition is an irreversible historical fact.
There is no need to enumerate the faults of the agreement, headed by the default to define itsfinal aim. It outlined a set of interim stages without stipulating where they would lead. Itset a time-table that was much too long. The commitments of the two sides were formulatedvaguely. These faults were not the result of carelessness, as many (especiallyPalestinians) believe, but were put into the agreement quite intentionally, especially bythe Israeli army officers who, by request of Rabin, changed many paragraphs at the lastmoment.
In the Israeli peace camp, many saw the faults clearly, but after a heated internal debate,most of us decided to support the agreement in spite of them. Our main argument was that afterthe historic mutual recognition, an irreversible peace dynamic would drive the processforward.
I am convinced even today that if things had been pushed forward rapidly, the Oslo agreementwould have led to peace. At the time, we asked Rabin to heed the warning of former British PrimeMinister David Lloyd-George who had said (about the Irish problem) that one cannot cross anabyss in two jumps. Rabin, a decent but hesitant person, was afraid to rush things. He himselfdrove the first nail into the coffin of Oslo by declaring that “there are no sacred dates”. Bydoing so he justified the first violations of the agreement and allowed the antagonisticforces in Israel time to regroup for the counter-attack.
Among the Palestinians, the agreement caused immense euphoria. I was an eyewitness to theexplosion of joy on the day of signing. Attacks in Israel stopped for a long time. ThePalestinians were convinced that in return for their major concessions (in Oslo, thePalestinians officially gave up 78% of mandatory Palestine) the Palestinian state wouldsoon come into being in all the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem.
It did not happen. One after another, successive Israeli governments refused to carry outtheir obligations, arguing that the other side, too, had violated the agreement. Israel hasstill not implemented the third withdrawal, which should have liberated almost all the WestBank (Area C) three years ago. Until today, the four promised “safe passages” between Gaza andthe West Bank have not been opened. Settlement activity has continued on an ever-increasingscale. The economic and human situation in the territories has got worse daily. (For example:before Oslo, every Palestinian could travel freely in Israel proper and between Gaza and theWest Bank, including Jerusalem. Oslo put an end to that.)
On the Palestinian side, disappointment has created a dangerous situation. On the Israeliside, opposition turned aggressive and violent. The murder of Rabin, the deed of anindividual expressing the will of a large camp, was the beginning of the murder of Oslo. Theenemies of Oslo have come to power in Israel, and they are still running our state.
All the Oslo processes have been turned on their head, and no other solution has taken theirplace. The bloody cycle of attack-retaliation- suicide-assassination has started again.
When the logic of peace gave way to the logic of war, all the achievements of Oslo assumed anopposite character. For example: the 40 thousand armed Palestinians, who were allowed toenter the Palestinian territories in order to serve as a solid foundation for the Palestinianstate and safeguard peace and security, turned into an arm of the uprising against thecontinuing occupation. The Palestinian Authority, which was meant to be the nucleus of thestate-in-the-making, became the center of the intifada.
All this would have been avoided, and peace between the two states would have become a realitylong ago, had we moved forward quickly and resolutely on the Oslo road. The murderers of Oslohave prevented this – and they are mostly on the Israeli side, because we are the strongerparty.
The slogan “Indict the Oslo Criminals” should be turned against them.