BFF-60 25 years on, Israeli right-wingers ready to declare Oslo accords dead

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ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-SETTLEMENTS

25 years on, Israeli right-wingers ready to declare Oslo accords dead

AMICHAI, Palestinian Territories, Sept 10, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A
panoramic view of mountains and neighbouring Palestinian villages before him,
Avichai Boaran thinks back on the Oslo accords first signed off on 25 years
ago and happily declares them dead.

“Oslo is buried deep in its grave,” says the 45-year-old resident of
Amichai, a new Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, referring to the
first of the two accords signed on September 13, 1993.

“And Israelis are jumping on the earth to pack it down hard.”

Twenty-five years after the first Oslo accord offered the prospect of
Israeli-Palestinian peace, Israel is governed by what is seen as its most
right-wing government ever, Jewish settler numbers have soared and an end to
the conflict looks remote.

When Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat sealed the first Oslo agreement with a handshake on the White House
lawn, there were 110,066 settlers in the West Bank and another 6,234 in the
Gaza Strip, according to Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now.

Today the Gaza settlers are gone, pulled out in a 2005 move by prime
minister Ariel Sharon that fiercely divided Israeli opinion.

But there are some 600,000 settlers living among nearly three million
Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Key members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current
coalition openly oppose a Palestinian state and have harshly criticised the
Oslo accords.

– ‘Not prepared to accept’ –

In June last year, work started on Amichai in the northern West Bank,
the first new government-sanctioned Jewish settlement since 1991, though
existing settlements and rogue outposts have expanded greatly during that
time.

Amichai is being built for about 40 families that were evicted from
Amona, a community built without Israeli permits that was demolished in
February 2017.

One of them is Boaran, a former Amona resident who fought against its
closure then became a leader of the campaign to rehouse those evicted.

In March he and his family moved into their new home, a modest
prefabricated building but with modern amenities such as a dishwasher and air
conditioning.

He told AFP that the Oslo agreement galvanised Israeli public opinion
against a Palestinian state on land that many Jews consider their biblical
birthright.

“The aim was complete withdrawal (by Jewish settlers) and to set up in
the heart of the land of Israel, the heart of the Jewish homeland, an
additional state…an additional Arab state,” he said.

“We are not prepared to accept a society which will turn its weapons and
its national aspirations against us. We are ruling out strategically the
vision of a Palestinian state.”

Netanyahu entered office as prime minister for the first time in 1996
after elections in which he was buoyed — at least in part — by a
groundswell of anti-Oslo opinion among voters.

Rabin had in the meantime been assassinated in November 1995 by a Jewish
extremist opposed to the accords.

Envisaged by the Oslo plan, although not stated explicitly, was a
sovereign Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.

– Secret back-channel –

Terje Roed-Larsen, a Norwegian academic who in 1992 headed an Oslo
institute for social research, became a prime mover of a covert plan to bring
together Israelis and officials of the Palestine Liberation Organisation
(PLO).

At the time, the PLO was listed by Israel as a terror organisation.

Roed-Larsen spoke with Yossi Beilin, who would later become Israeli
deputy foreign minister, and eventually explored setting up back-channel
talks with Arafat.

“We started talks with Faisal Husseini, who was the Palestinian leader in
Jerusalem,” Roed-Larsen said by phone from New York, where he now heads the
International Peace Institute think-tank.

“What I realised through those talks was that without the PLO and Arafat
it was impossible to reach any kind of agreement because it would have been
blocked by the PLO.”

It was agreed that the Norwegians should be the brokers at the sessions,
which took place largely in Oslo, lending the agreement its name.

Although the Oslo process eventually ground to a halt, Roed-Larsen says
it was not a failure.

“Still the two-state solution is a viable idea,” he said.

He added that without the signs of a thaw between Israel and the
Palestinians, Jordan could not have signed a 1994 peace treaty with the
Jewish state.

While the international community still sees two states as the preferred
outcome, Israelis are evenly divided and few see any end to the conflict with
the Palestinians in the near term.

An August poll by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University
showed 47 percent of respondents in favour of two states and 46 percent
against.

It said that 86 percent saw the chances of a peace breakthrough in the
coming 12 months as “low” or “very low”.

BSS/AFP/RY/1820 hrs