The Peace FAQ:

Oslo, The Oslo Accords

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Why did the Oslo Accords fail to stop violence and create the desired peace?
• But with Oslo, haven't the Palestinians agreed to end the violence, limit guns to police, and allow free access to holy places, amend their covenant, etc...?

Why did the Oslo Accords fail to stop violence and create the desired peace?

• "There is no better illustration of the comical one-sidedness of the peace process: Israel's demand for Palestinian compliance with its own written obligations is deemed a form of sabotage."

  - Commentator Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post, Jan 16, 1998)

• "All Oslo's basic assumptions have failed to withstand the test of time: that European democracy would sweep across the Middle East; that Gaza would become the new Singapore; that Saddam Hussein was finished in 1991; that Arafat and the secular Arab states would join Israel in the fight against Iranian fundamentalism; that Arafat wanted to make peace and could deliver; that we would give them guns and territory and they would fight terror. The Middle East is only new in one sense: It is more dangerous than ever."

  - Uzi Landau, Likud Knesset member, The Jerusalem Report, Sept 28, 1998

• "No Palestinian will ever be extradited to Israel. A decision has been made to this effect, and it is inconceivable to think that such a thing would ever happen."

  - PA "moderate" Hanan Ashwari, confirming the PA's intention to violate a key Oslo obligation (Voice of Palestine, quoted by Arutz 7, Aug 14)

• SERIOUS FLAWS IN THE OSLO AGREEMENT
  1. The most fundamental flaw is the renunciation of Jewish claims to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel cannot be renounced by a transitory Israeli government. The present government has no right to deprive future generations of Jews and Israelis of their legal patrimony.
     
  2. Yasir Arafat's PLO is incapable of providing Israelis with the cessation of violence they so dearly crave. There are ten rejectionist PLO factions plus Hamas and other Islamic fundamentalist factions that will continue to kill Jews.
     
  3. Without the presence of Israel's internal security force (Shin Bet) inside Judea, Samaria and Gaza, it will be impossible to halt terrorism or even keep it within present levels. The Israel Defense Forces maintain tremendous power but are of little importance in day-to-day terrorism.
     
  4. Arafat's signature on the agreement and the PLO acceptance is of no consequence as Arafat is a documented liar. Muslims are permitted to lie to to non-Muslims and break agreements with them under the Koranic law of HUDAIBIYA. Treaties and contracts with them are worthless.
     
  5. By virtue of this agreement, the Israeli government has validated Arab claims to the Land of Israel. Decades of fighting Arab propaganda and distortions of history are trivialized and discounted.
     
  6. This agreement puts the status of Jerusalem on the negotiating table. Every previous government of Israel steadfastly stood by the principle of Jerusalem being non-negotiable.
     
  7. All of Israel's military and civilian communications will now be easily monitored from the hills of Judea and Samaria.
     
  8. While Israeli radar and military installations are not affected by this current agreement, the future is less certain. Eventually the Arab population will force the Israelis out.
     
  9. Whether they admit it publicly or not, Israeli leaders know that this is the first step to a Palestinian state.
     
  10. The "Palestinian right of return" has been acknowledged for the first time by the Israelis and could result in a flood of Arabs to Judea and Samaria.
      
  11. The inevitable increase in Arab population will result in tremendous pressure on Israel's water supply. As Arab wells are dug in the Judean and Samarian hills, the natural mountain aquifer that supplies much of Tel Aviv and the coastal plain with water will be serious depleted. Such depletion will cause the salt water of the Mediterranean Sea to penetrate Israel's coastal strip, thus destroying all water supplies. This process can be witnessed in California, where sea water has already penetrated five miles into the coast.
      
  12. Some 70% of Israel's population and industry is concentrated in a small strip of coast and greater Tel Aviv. That population will be immediately threatened by Kaytusha rockets. Fired singly from the hills of Judea and Samaria, and set with timers they will be virtually impossible to stop. The Israeli government plan to coordinate with the Palestinian police is akin to working with the fox to guard the henhouse. The Palestinian police are being recruited from among the terrorists who delight especially in murder and mutilation of bodies. Will they arrest and turn over a terrorist who kills Israelis and then escapes to Gaza?
      
  13. The Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza will no doubt be victims of ethnic cleansing. The Arabs will insist on a Jew-free country like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. The government has already begun confiscating the weapons of Jews, which could cause them to become vulnerable to massacre like the Bosnians.
      
  14. The air and seaports planned for Gaza will facilitate the entry of weapons and terrorists, threatening the security of Israel.
      
  15. The proposed "safe passages" for the PA will facilitate the movement of terrorists and weapons from Gaza to Judea and Samaria.

  - Bernard J. Shapiro, Editor of the Freeman List

• "Five years ago, Yitzhak Rabin brought peace to Israel."

  - Statement by organisers of a "Peace Now" rally in Tel Aviv (Sept 12, 1997), one day after the government issued a statement noting that terrorists had killed more people in Israel since the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords than in the 15 years before that.

• "All Oslo's basic assumptions have failed to withstand the test of time: that European democracy would sweep across the Middle East; that Gaza would become the new Singapore; that Saddam Hussein was finished in 1991; that Arafat and the secular Arab states would join Israel in the fight against Iranian fundamentalism; that Arafat wanted to make peace and could deliver; that we would give them guns and territory and they would fight terror. The Middle East is only new in one sense: It is more dangerous than ever."

  - Uzi Landau, Israeli Knesset member (The Jerusalem Report, Sept 28, 1997)

But with Oslo, haven't the Palestinians agreed to end the violence, limit guns to police, and allow free access to holy places, amend their covenant, etc...?

• On the Palestinian police force:

  "As a Palestinian police officer, I will not hesitate to give my gun to anyone who approaches me and tells me he is going to commit an attack against the army or the settlers. I will even kiss the gun before and after the operation."

  - a P.L.O. recruit from Ramallah for the Palestinian police (Iton Yerushalayim, 10 December 1993)

• On the right of Jews to visit holy places in Judea, Samaria and Gaza:

  "We expect the Israelis to give us back these holy places... We believe in freedom of religion. But Jews won't have rights there because these are our places."

  - Hasan Tahboub, head of the P.L.O.-backed Supreme Muslim Council (The Jerusalem Report, 16 December 1993)

• On the continuation of the intifada:

  "Reteach the enemy the lesson of the intifada."

  - from a leaflet distributed in Ramallah by Fatah, Yasser Arafat's faction of the P.L.O. (Iton Yerushalayim, 10 December 1993)

  "The intifada will continue, as will the carrying of weapons in the territories and outside of them."

  - Farouk Qaddumi, head of the P.L.O.'s Political Department, in a speech at a ceremony marking the closing of the P.L.O.'s radio station in Algiers (Yediot Aharonot, 10 August 1994)

• On the ultimate goals:

  "Our enemy is a lowly enemy. The Palestinian people know there is a state that was established through coercion and it must be destroyed. This is the Palestinian way."

  - Farouk Qaddumi, head of the P.L.O.'s Political Department, in a speech at a ceremony marking the closing of the P.L.O.'s radio station in Algiers (Reuters, 10 August 1994; Yediot Aharonot, 10 August 1994)

  They will fight for Allah, and they will kill and be killed, and this is a solemn oath. . . . Our blood is cheap compared with the cause which has brought us together and which at moments separated us, but shortly we will meet again in heaven. . . . Palestine is our land and Jerusalem is our capital.

  - Yasser Arafat, from Arafat and the Uses of Terror, by Jonathan Torop, Commentary Magazine -- May 1997

  "We will fight until a Palestinian state is established."

  - Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the P.L.O., in a letter congratulating Saddam Hussein on Iraqi Independence Day (Yediot Aharonot, 24 July 1994)

• "No Palestinian will ever be extradited to Israel. A decision has been made to this effect, and it is inconceivable to think that such a thing would ever happen."

  - PA "moderate" Hanan Ashwari, confirming the PA's intention to violate a key Oslo obligation (Voice of Palestine, quoted by Arutz 7, Aug 14, 1997)

• Still Waiting for PA Compliance

  ...the Israeli cabinet agreed on its expectations of the Palestinian Authority, prerequisites for a further Israeli withdrawal from areas of Judea-Samaria.The PA reacted by accusing Israel of "new tricks"--a line parroted by some media commentators--and that Israel was making it impossible for the PA to comply. But all of the obligations were agreed upon and signed into accords years ago. In return for these undertakings, the PA has achieved a mini-state, with control over major cities and scores of villages in Judea-Samaria and Gaza. The obligations Israel is insisting the PA meet, include:

  * The revision of the PLO Covenant, most of whose 33 clauses contain references to Israel's destruction or call for violence against Israel

  As early as September 1993, Arafat wrote in a letter to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that: "The PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant." In return for that undertaking, Rabin recognised the PLO and agreed to negotiate with it.

  In April 1996, the PNC voted for a six-month deadline for a legal panel to draft a new charter for the PLO. However, the deadline passed, with no panel ever having convened.

  Last February, a month after documents attached to the Hebron Protocol obligated the PA to "complete the process of revising the Palestinian National Charter", the PA chief negotiator Abu Mazen said there was no need to amend the Covenant as the required changes had already been made.

  However, the allegedly amended Covenant has never been published or made available, and is generally believed not to exist.

  Israel wants the PNC's legal committee to "issue a statement specifying which articles have been annulled in accordance with the April 1996 PNC decision. Then, the PNC itself must reconvene and pass a new resolution affirming the statement by its legal committee concerning which specific articles in the Covenant have been changed."

  * Reduce the size of the PA police force.

  Israel accuses the PA of deploying nearly 36,000 policemen in areas under its jurisdiction, exceeding the limit prescribed by the Oslo accords by more than 50 per cent (other sources, including a PA human rights group, has put the true figure at closer to 85,000). Moreover, the PA has failed to give Israel a complete list of all police recruits for review and approval.

  * Restrict official PA activities to areas under PA control

  Israel has repeatedly demanded that the PA stop operating in Jerusalem. It wants an end to the activities in the capital of all PA officials, including those on the Temple Mount carried out by the PA's "Minister for Religious Affairs" Hassan Tahboub and Islamic Mufti Ikrama Sabri. It has repeated its call for Faisal Husseini's "Ministry for Jerusalem Affairs" to stop its activities at Orient House, the eastern Jerusalem building dubbed the "unofficial PLO HQ" in the city, and for an end to PA security services' operations in Jerusalem.

  * The obligation to fight terror and prevent violence

  Israel focused in January on three specific areas where the PA had failed to honour its commitments:

  Preventing incitement and hostile propaganda. The government presented more than 80 statements made by PA officials and PA media in the past year "which constitute incitement to violence and hostile propaganda against Israel they have praised Hamas terrorists, threatened Israel with war, and accused Israel of injecting Palestinians with the AIDS virus, poisoning Palestinian food products and threatening to destroy the Al-Aksa mosque."

  Israel said it expected officials to stop engaging in and encouraging incitement against Israel. "PA employees, preachers in mosques and others who incite to violence against Israel must be dismissed from their posts, prosecuted and punished. The PA must also end incitement to violence against Israel in the official Palestinian media (including radio and television).

  "The PA should undertake a comprehensive public education campaign regarding the rejection of violence and terror and normalisation with Israel."

  Transfer of terror suspects to Israel. The government named 34 individuals Israel has asked be handed over to face trial, including PA Police Chief Ghazi Jabali, wanted for instructing PA policemen to ambush and fire at Israelis; suspected killers of Israeli civilians; and suspected masterminds of bombings which cost scores of lives. To date, the repeated extradition requests have been ignored.

  Confiscation of illegal firearms. Israel wants the PA "to systematically confiscate all illegal weapons and punish those illegally bearing arms. The PA must also act to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Palestinian-controlled areas by all elements, including by senior Palestinian officials and VIPs. PA officials caught smuggling weapons must be removed from their posts. Any weapons and explosives in PA possession or in Palestinian-controlled areas which violate the terms of the accord must be transferred to Israel."

  - from the Canadian Friends of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem

• RELATED SECTIONS:

  Peace Treaties, Land-for-Peace, Palestine, Arafat, Camp David, The Phased Plan, Intifada, Oppression, The Occupied Territories

• WWW RESOURCES:

• BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
  • Jerusalem: The Truth, by David Bar-Illan [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege, by Kenneth Levin [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • A Durable Peace: Israel and Its Place Among the Nations, by Benjamin Netanyahu [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Mideast Peace Process: An Autopsy, by Neal Kozodoy, Mark Helprin [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Roadmap To Nowhere: A Layman's Guide to the Middle East Conflict, by Yitschak Ben Gad [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest, by Efraim Karsh [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The High Cost of Peace: How Washington's Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism, by Yossef Bodansky, Jim Saxton [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Dangers of a Palestinian State, by Raphael Israeli [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel's Wars, by Yaacov Lozowick [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israel Conflict, Second Edition, by Mitchell Geoffrey Bard [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Martin Gilbert [VIEW BOOK HERE]