For your perusal, my latest INTO THE FRAY column:
Oslo at twenty-four – Failing the “crystal ball” test
(Kindly consider “liking”, sharing, tweeting – please use hash-tag #IntoFray)
If Rabin had a crystal ball that allowed him to foresee the terrible trauma and tragedy the Oslo Agreements would cause, there is little doubt that he would have never agreed to its signature.
It appears this week on the following sites (in alphabetical order):
ALGEMEINER: (To be posted)
ISRAELI FRONTLINE: http://www.israelifrontline.com/2017/09/oslo-twenty-four-failing-crystal-ball-test.html
ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS: http://strategic-israel.org/2108/into-the-fray-oslo-at-twenty-four-failing-the-crystal-ball-test/
ISRAEL NEWS ONLINE: https://israelnewsonline.org/into-the-fray-oslo-at-twenty-four-failing-the-crystal-ball-test/#.Wc9AaGiCw2w
ISRAEL RISING: https://www.israelrising.com/oslo-twenty-four-failing-crystal-ball-test/
ISRAPUNDIT: https://www.israpundit.org/into-the-fray-oslo-at-twenty-four-failing-the-crystal-ball-test/
JERUSALEM HERALD: https://www.jerusalem-herald.com/single-post/2017/09/29/INTO-THE-FRAY-Oslo-at-24—Failing-the-%25E2%2580%259CCrystal-Ball%25E2%2580%259D-Test
JEWS DOWN UNDER: https://jewsdownunder.com/2017/09/29/fray-oslo-twenty-four-failing-crystal-ball-test/
MEDIUM : https://medium.com/@martinsherman/into-the-fray-oslo-at-twenty-four-failing-the-crystal-ball-test-b248af0972c9
JEWISH PRESS: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/columns/into-the-fray-martin-sherman/into-the-fray-oslo-at-24-failing-the-crystal-ball-test/2017/10/01/
Several short excerpts:
We have come to try and put an end to the hostilities, so that our children, our children’s children, will no longer experience the painful cost of war, violence and terror. We have come to secure their lives and to ease the sorrow and the painful memories of the past to hope and pray for peace. – Yitzhak Rabin at the signing ceremony of the Oslo I Accords, September 13, 1993.
This September marked the passing of 24 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords. Although little is left of the heady—the less charitable might say, “irresponsible”—optimism that accompanied the signing ceremony on the White House…the “two-states-for-two-peoples” format it forged, still – inexplicably—dominates the discourse as the sole principle upon which a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict can be based.
Puzzling and Perturbing
In many ways, the continued “durability” of the Oslowian “recipe” is astonishing…Indeed, it is difficult to imagine what else should happen, what further disaster should befall both Jew and Arab, for it to be abandoned as the abject failure it has incontrovertibly proved to be…Yet stubbornly—indeed, obsessively—two-staters cling to the tenets of their political dogma—no matter what the human cost; no matter how much evidence of their tragic error continues to inexorably accumulate…
Hardly a revolutionary revelation
…Indeed, seventeen years ago, just weeks after the Palestinian-Arabs launched their gory wave of violence (a.k.a. the Second Intifada), an article of mine appeared on Israel’s most trafficked Hebrew-language site, YNet. It was entitled “The Crystal Ball”. The sub-headline read: “The Oslo process and its basic assumptions have failed the test of reality”…
Failing the test of reality
…I therefore, ventured to postulate: “I have no doubt that had the architects of these accords known that events would turn out as they have, they would not have signed them. I have no doubt that had the public foreseen what has come about it would not have given its support to the process or to its initiators. Accordingly, we can categorically declare that the Oslo process, and the world view on which it was based, have utterly failed the ‘crystal ball test’ i.e. failed the test of reality.”
Despite expectations…
In light of all this, I expressed what appeared to be a reasonable expectation: “…that, given the appalling consequences the political processes had precipitated, there would have been a wholesale abandonment of it by its [hitherto] supporters….“However,” I lamented, “this was not the case. Despite the fact that not even a miniscule trace of any residual success could be found, a significant number of people…still refuse to acknowledge failure or error.
What the crystal ball would have revealed…
… it was the bloody Passover massacre in March 2002 at the Park Hotel in the seaside resort of Netanya that led to Operation “Defensive Shield”, the first of a series of punitive military campaigns launched by the IDF when Palestinian-Arab terror reached unacceptably murderous levels, which the Israeli military was compelled to quell…The ensuing decade was replete with recurring bloodshed…
From “Cast Lead” to “Protective Edge”
…There can .. be little doubt that the Disengagement did lead to the Islamist takeover of Gaza in 2007…In the wake of Hamas’s ascendance, there was a massive increase in attacks against Israel, with thousands of rockets, missiles and mortar shells being fired at civilian targets…
On the Palestinian side…
On the Palestinian side, our crystal ball would have swiftly dispelled the rosy predictions of a peaceful, prosperous EU-like Middle East stretching from the Sahara Desert to the Persian Gulf, that the Oslo Accords were supposed usher in…Setting aside the rape, arson, slaughter and misery that raged across the post-Oslo Middle East as the chill winds of the Arab Spring swept through country after country, the Oslo accords brought scant benefits to the Palestinian-Arabs.
If Rabin had a crystal ball…
So if indeed, Rabin could have foreseen that all this would be Israel’s lot in exchange for the gut-wrenching and perilous concessions the agreements called on it to make, who could doubt that he would never have affixed his signature to them…Surely then, this—the Crystal Ball Test—is the ultimate indictment of the Oslo Agreements. Surely, it is time, after a quarter-century, for them—and all that they stand for—to be branded what they indisputably turned out to be –a colossal and tragic blunder of historic proportions—and to be treated as such.
