The Oslo Accords Are One of the Greatest Follies in the History of the Jewish People

Ma’ariv, Israel, September 13

Barbara Tuchman famously begins her iconic book The March of Folly by exploring the phenomenon of governments adopting policies that are contradictory to their own interests. In her book, she concludes that it seems as if humans have a propensity to act with greater folly in the realm of governance than in other aspects of life. For a policy to be considered an act of folly, three criteria must be met: first, it must have its negative consequences readily apparent at the time of implementation, not in hindsight. Second, there must be an alternative course of action that could have been taken. And third, it must be the policy of a collective, not a single ruler, and it must persist for more than a single political generation. It is indisputable that the Oslo Accords meet all these conditions. Tuchman begins her book with King Rehoboam, whose example of folly led to the disintegration of the nation of Israel into Judah and Israel. Had she still been alive, it is quite likely she would have ended her book with the Oslo Accords, one of the greatest follies in modern history. Let’s start from the end. The mistake made in the Oslo Accords was not within the original vision, which was largely in line with Prime Minister Begin’s peace agreement with Egypt: establishing Palestinian autonomy (shy of a state, as Rabin consistently noted). In Israel, there was widespread recognition of the need for a solution that would enable Palestinians to manage their own civil affairs. The first misguided and fateful decision was to negotiate this with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a murderous terrorist organization dedicated to annihilating the State of Israel. Established in 1964 (predating the Six-Day War by three years), the PLO had the mission of reclaiming all of Israel as Palestine. There were certainly other alternatives available, including local leadership in Judea and Samaria. Yasser Arafat was a desolate and ostracized figure prior to the Oslo Accords and the First Gulf War, owing to his decision to support the Iraqi dictator against an American-Arab coalition, which inflicted significant harm to him, his position, and his organization. Israel, though, brought the master murderer back from the “isle of the dead” and placed him in the center of the world stage, heavily armed. To cleverly manage the risks, the first step taken was the “Gaza and Jericho first” plan. In 1994, the IDF withdrew from all Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the Gaza Strip. No sooner had this withdrawal taken place than the Palestinians, led by Arafat, began to construct a weapons industry and produce an array of armaments, such as rockets, mortars, anti-tank missiles, and inferno tunnels. The dire results of the Oslo Accords were evident from the very start. It was anticipated that given the setback in Gaza, the Israeli government would pause and reflect; instead, the failure was extended to Judea and Samaria, with the government’s resolution to withdraw from Palestinian West Bank cities. Predictably, a hefty terrorist network and multitude of explosives labs emerged in response and unleashed a level of terror not yet witnessed in the nation, pre- or post-establishment. So severe was the unrest that we had to engage in Operation Defensive Shield to regain control over each city in Judea and Samaria. If these two enormous missteps were not enough, the Israeli government led by Ariel Sharon made an unbelievable decision to pull out Jewish residents from the Gaza Strip in the face of ferocious fighting in Gaza and create a terror giant whose reach extends to Lebanon, Syria, Judea, Samaria and even the Arab Israelis. The Oslo Accords have resulted in a staggering number of casualties over the past decades, with nine and a half times more deaths and injuries caused by hostilities compared to when the agreement was first signed. This situation is exacerbated by the BDS movement, The Hague court, and other tools used to delegitimize the State of Israel. In addition, the “Palestinianization” of Israeli Arabs has been accelerated by the Palestinian Authority, which continues to finance terrorism and incentivize attacks that have cost the Israeli people dearly. —Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)