"Peace be upon you, angels of peace," an editorial in the Davar newspaper promoted the themes of the Oslo Gospel, in the spirit of the ancient Sabbath liturgy, on September 13, 1993. This ancient-new text was published on the day the agreement was officially signed on the White House lawn, and the writer S. Yizhar estimated on a neighboring page that "the chick of the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is the beginning of a new sphere."
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, one of the signatories, imagined to him "the heavy march of the battle shoes, leaving the stage after a century of hostilities," and even felt "the gentle sound of the coming peace steps." Amos Oz, in Yedioth Ahronoth, also estimated that "from a Zionist perspective, they may say in the future that in 1993 our hundred years of loneliness in the Land of Israel ended..."
As a rule, the media rocked the bell of history strongly, and Haim Hefer wrote on behalf of those who fell in Israel's battles: "To all the military cemeteries I get up and go today / And with a great roar and dance steps, I announce to my tombstones / 'Peace'! / And I whisper to them, to my friends from 1948 and to my son from the last battle: / Here are the coming days of forgiveness and kindness, here is the end of enmity and wrath... And I want to say: 'That we have lived and fulfilled' - but I bite my lip / 'And we have come to this time,' I hear from all my dead."
After the agreement // Archive photo
Within a few months, however, the truth was revealed in all its nakedness. The sounds and notes that Peres, Hefer and most of the media heard and wrote in their imaginations turned out to be wishful thinking. The reality was completely different. One after another, almost every day, the "victims of peace" were brought to eternal rest, and Uri Zvi Greenberg's "daily funeral" from the days of the pogroms before the establishment of the state was suddenly sour and sad.
The Oslo process, which was supposed to be a peace process, looked almost from the beginning like a terrorist process. Anyone who lived in Jerusalem or Judea and Samaria, but also in Tel Aviv, Hadera, Haifa, and many other localities in Israel, will find it hard to forget. The Israel of those years lived in a harsh routine of terror of bereavement and orphanhood and pain that struck and fooled it. Once at night and once during the day, morning and evening, once on Saturday and once on Saturday night. No rules, no rules, and everything became possible.
Photo: AP,
My children, who have since grown up and become parents, knew they had to stay away from long lines and crowded places, where terror is looking for its victims. Cafes and restaurants to which it was possible to "escape" until then have been erased from daily routine. Hiking in nature has become walks in the lap of danger. We avoided getting on buses, for fear that they would explode on their occupants. We found ourselves calculating movements, hours and minutes, trying to push our duties and conduct into the seemingly less dangerous quota of hours per day, until that, too, was reduced and almost exhausted. Even the usual morning goodbye turned into a farewell that could, God forbid, have been a final farewell.
For four years, the Al-Aqsa Intifada circled around us, and we went about our daily lives around it, in a kind of chilling dance of death. It was a war in every respect: the war on the home front. The Oslo War, which reached our very homes. Some eluded her and some hurt them. The neighbor's cousin. The brother of the twins who studied with the son in elementary school. The nephew of the neighbor from the previous residential neighborhood. The woman with me who was at the pharmacy just as a suicide bomber exploded in the pastry shop across the street. My sister and brother-in-law Shash were shot at them on their way home to Gush Etzion. Almost everyone had their dead, injured or acquaintance, and it all became so touching and personal.
144 suicide bombing attacks
More than any other terrible measure, Palestinian terror in those years was characterized by targets that came its way: entire families and parts of families, grandparents, father and mother, son and daughter, infants and mammals. Already in December 93, Mordechai Lapid and his son Shalom were murdered on Porcelain Hill in Kiryat Arba, and later entire families were wiped out: the eight members of the Nice family who were murdered in an attack in the Beit Israel neighborhood of Jerusalem; the five members of the Schijveschuurder family who were murdered in the attack at the Sbarro restaurant; the four members of the Shabu family who were murdered in Itamar; Nava Applebaum, who was murdered on the eve of her wedding together with her father, Dr. David Appelbaum; And so are dozens of other families, who lost at least two of their loved ones, and thousands who were injured, including hundreds of children.
The difference between "before Oslo" and "after Oslo" was clear: in the decade before the agreement, some 170 Israelis were murdered in terrorist acts. Over the next decade, more than 1,400 Israelis were murdered. According to the Shin Bet, from 29 September 2000 (the beginning of the second intifada) to the end of 2009, 1,178 Israelis and 50 foreigners were murdered in Palestinian terror attacks and 8,022 people were injured. About 70 per cent of those killed were civilians. The remaining 30% were members of the security forces (including soldiers killed in attacks on the home front). More than 20,144 terrorist attacks, including 161 suicide bombings, were carried out against Israel by <> suicide bombers.
Many warned in advance, from the first moment. Few listened to them. The writing was written on the wall, huge. The Palestinians themselves wrote it in a thousand and one languages, mainly in the language of blood, but also in simple words, clear to all - but the leaders of the state, headed by Rabin and Peres and their friends, turned their backs on it.
On the day of the signing in Washington, D.C., while dressed in a khaki uniform, gray beard bristles adorn his cheeks, and behind him a long mileage of horrific attacks and murders - in Ma'a lot, Kiryat Shmona, Avivim, on the coastal road, where not? Yasser Arafat left a pre-recorded speech in Arabic, broadcast to his people on Jordanian television, at the same time as the ceremony in Washington.
Arafat was not talking about peace there, but about the "phased plan." He clarified that the Declaration of Principles was only part of the implementation of the PLO's well-known "phased strategy," the one adopted by the organization in June 1974. The "theory of stages," we will recall here, stipulated that the Palestinians would receive any territory that Israel transferred to them, and then turn it into a springboard for further conquests and territorial gains, until the "complete liberation of Palestine," the one between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, or in less euphemistic words: Palestine instead of Israel.
Oslo scholar Prof. Ephraim Karsh would later discover that that same month, Arafat mentioned the "phased plan" more than a dozen times in the Arab media, and in one interview even promised that "in the future Israel and Palestine will be 'one united state,'" a somewhat subtle phrase commonly used by Palestinians to illustrate the future disappearance of the Jewish state.
Photo: Moshe Shai,
On the day he entered Gaza, Arafat smuggled Mamdouh Nofal, one of the planners of the Ma'a lot massacre in 1974, in which 27 people, including 22 children, were murdered. IDF Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz would later discover that Arafat had also smuggled weapons in those days – once rifles in his helicopter and other times Lao and RPG missiles in trucks.
In the historic letter in which the PLO and Arafat ostensibly recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security, the PLO pledged to "renounce the use of terrorism and other acts of violence," and even to impose punishments on those who act differently. The letter was a precondition for signing the agreement, but in practice not only did the PLO and Arafat fail to comply with it, they continued to act like terrorists, and often did not even try to hide it.
"Reaping the Fruits of Terror"
At the basis of the blatant disregard and wholesale violation of many substantive clauses in the agreement were two basic concepts, intertwined, that were deeply rooted in the center of the Palestinian experience. The fact that the agreement of principles skipped over both, and that the parties decided to ignore them, did not sweep them under the carpet.
One concerned the stubborn refusal of the Palestinians (to this day!) to recognize the State of Israel as a Jewish state or as the nation-state of the Jewish people. At the root of this refusal was (and still stands) the historical approach of Islam, which generally does not recognize the Jews as a people or a nation, but only as a religion.
The second was directly related to the Palestinian refusal to give up the "right of return" to areas, lands, property and property from which they had been displaced in 1948, during the War of Independence, when the Arab states and many Arabs in the Land of Israel tried to thwart the establishment of the State of Israel and eliminate and/or expel its Jewish residents.
Many colmosins have already been broken, and keyboards have been worn thin, in these two matters. But without delving into them, there is really no real possibility of understanding the colossal failure of the Oslo Accords and the trail of blood that these agreements left behind.
The most exhaustive clarification of these two issues, a cold and rational clarification, almost with tweezers, was actually conducted within the walls of the Jerusalem District Court about a decade ago. This lesser-known incident took place in the winter of 2013, in the courtroom of Judge Moshe Drori, when Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the research division of Military Intelligence, was called to the witness stand as an expert prosecution witness on behalf of bereaved families whose loved ones were murdered or injured in terrorist acts in which the PA was involved.
Anyone who wants to dive deep into the Oslo rift should turn to Kuperwasser's testimony, which spanned two whole days and hundreds of pages of transcripts.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser. Currently Senior Researcher, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Photo: Yehoshua Yosef
Kuperwasser was asked directly whether he thought the implementation of the Palestinian armed option could have been prevented had genuine relations of trust prevailed between Israel and the PA. He said no, explaining that the PA did not build its relationship with Israel "on the basis of a genuine intention to reach an agreement, but continued to adhere to the idea that the purpose of the process and the talks was to reap the fruits of the terror it had conducted before. The PA wanted to reach a reality in which it would receive a state in all of the territories of 1967, without giving up the idea that in the end it would be able to turn the State of Israel into a non-Jewish state."
Justice Moshe Drori found it difficult to understand: "Why did the word 'non-Jewish' jump out to us?"
Kuperwasser explained: "When Arafat said he recognized the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security, he meant – as long as it is not a Jewish state. This game between Israel and the Jewish state is a game that the Palestinians play to this day."
Attorney Arnon, who represented the PA at the hearing, asked: "Where do your intelligence sources come from?"
Kuperwasser: "From endless publications by the Palestinians themselves. Publicly."
Attorney Arnon: "Is this your personal interpretation?"
Kuperwasser: No, that's the interpretation of all Palestinian leaders.
Judge Drori reminded the senior officer that despite what he said, from time to time, the Palestinians still use the expression "two states for two peoples." "How does that square with your thesis?"
Kuperwasser: "... Both Arafat and the Palestinian leadership were ready for an arrangement that they saw as an interim arrangement. This is step theory... In the framework of which Palestine is established alongside the State of Israel, as an interim stage, within the '67 borders, provided that a solution is also put in place that will satisfy the Palestinians in terms of the right of return... The Palestinians are not against an agreement... They are in favor of an arrangement based on the two-state solution, as long as it is not two states for two peoples, because they do not recognize the existence of the Jewish people at all."
Judge: "But they use the expression 'two states for two peoples'?"
Kuperwasser: "No, they strongly oppose it. The Arabs are talking about two states... And rarely, when pressed into a corner, do they add "for two peoples," and immediately clarify: "the Palestinian people" and "the Israeli people." They have a new people, called the Israeli people, because they don't recognize the Jewish people. Israel, as far as they are concerned, can be a state of all its citizens. All its citizens are Israelis."
PA Attorney: "... Peace is being made on the basis of the Oslo plan, not on the basis of the phased plan."
Kuperwasser: "The Oslo plan does not contradict the phased plan. It's just its first stage."
Judge: "And what does the phased plan say?"
Kuperwasser: "That a Palestinian state can be established on any piece of historic Palestine liberated... Without giving up the hope and the ongoing striving to establish a state on the entire territory of Palestine."
Judge: "All over its territory? Instead of the State of Israel?"
Kuperwasser: "Instead of the State of Israel... Hence the Palestinians' desire to return to Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Ashkelon. Everywhere today is Israel."
"נשתלט על הכל"
אחרי שמעיינים בחילופי הדברים הללו בין קופרווסר לפרקליט הרש"פ והשופט מבינים טוב יותר את קוד ההתנהגות של ערפאת ובכיריו לאורך השנים. החל מהאופן שבו הם שיטו, חמש שנים תמימות, ברבין ובחבריו בכל הנוגע להבטחתם לבטל את הסעיפים באמנה הפלשתינית השוללים את הלגיטימיות של המדינה היהודית וקוראים להשמדת ישראל; דרך הגדרת ישראל כ"אויב"; וכלה בהבטחות לשחרר לא רק את "הגדה" אלא גם את "האזרחים הערבים של ישראל". לאלה צריך כמובן לצרף אינסוף ביטויי שנאה ושטנה על היהודים, הציונות וישראל, והפצת עלילות דם, כולל האשמת ישראל והיהודים ("צאצאי הקופים והחזירים") בהפצה מתוכננת של מחלות, גזים רעילים, סמים וחיידקי איידס בקרב הפלשתינים.
אבל לצד רשימת הזוועות המתועדות הללו, שבינן לבין "שלום" אין כמובן דבר וחצי דבר, היו עוד שני אירועים בולטים שממרחק הימים צריך להתעכב גם עליהם. הראשון היה נאום שאותו נשא ערפאת במסגד ביוהנסבורג במאי 1994, והשני פגישה שלו עם עשרות דיפלומטים ערבים במלון גראנד הוטל בשטוקהולם ב־1996.
ביוהנסבורג ערפאת השווה את הסכמי אוסלו להסכם חודייבה שהנביא מוחמד חתם עם אנשי מכה ב־628, הסכם שהופר מקץ שנתיים בלבד כאשר כוחו הצבאי של מוחמד התחזק. הסכם חודייבה הפך שם קוד לבריתות רמייה זמניות, שמנהיגים מוסלמים נאלצים לכרות עם האויב עד שיתחזקו ויוכלו להביסו. אוסלו - אמר למעשה ערפאת - הוא מעשה רמייה.
הנאום, שהוקלט על ידי יהודי מקומי שהתחפש למוסלמי, הוברח בקלטת לישראל. אני ושניים מעמיתיי פרסמנו אותו. רבין נדהם. הוא תבע מערפאת לחזור בו, אבל ערפאת דבק בדברים וכעבור שלושה שבועות חזר עליהם: "הנביא מוחמד", הטעים, "הגיע להסכם דומה עם הכופרים בחודייבה, וההסכם נקרע לגזרים כעבור שנתיים".
לאחר שנתיים, בשטוקהולם, מול הדיפלומטים הערבים, ערפאת אכן קרע את ההסכם לגזרים (לפחות מטפורית) כשהבטיח להפוך את "חייהם של היהודים לבלתי נסבלים באמצעות לוחמה פסיכולוגית והתפוצצות אוכלוסייה". "יהודים", ספק ייחל, ספק צפה ערפאת, "לא ירצו לחיות בין הערבים... הם יוותרו על בתיהם ויהגרו לארה"ב. אנו הפלשתינים נשתלט על הכל... אני לא צריך יהודים", סיכם ערפאת, "הם היו ונשארו יהודים... אנו זקוקים עכשיו לכל העזרה שאנו יכולים לקבל מכם במלחמתנו למען פלשתין מאוחדת בשלטון ערבי" (הציטוט לקוח ממחקרו של פרופ' אפרים קארש: "מלחמת אוסלו. אנטומיה של הונאה עצמית", מרכז בס"א, אוניברסיטת בר־אילן).
Arafat was not alone. Farouk Qaddoumi, head of the PLO's political department, spoke of "the continuation of the uprising, the only language Israel understands." Palestinian Justice Minister Farih Abu Medin referred to the demand that the PA curb Hamas, and made it clear that the PLO and the opposition complement each other. Mahmoud Abbas explained: "Now we are against the armed struggle because we cannot. Things may change in the future."
Arafat with Mahmoud Abbas, photo: AFP
I remember very well the day when Nasser Yusuf, commander of the Palestinian police forces in Gaza, walked around with a swollen chest on a lecture tour in Tel Aviv waving "peace," while in Gush Katif car bombs exploded and Israelis were murdered. I remember Kobi Mandel and Yosef Ish-Ran, whose mutilated bodies were discovered in the Khariton cave, while the PA spokesman muttered and juggled slogans of "peace." At the time, the PA operated a revolving door, arrested terrorists and perpetrators and planners of attacks, and quickly released them. Among them were Abd al-Sitri, a senior member of Hamas' military wing, Mohammed Deif's right-hand man; Bassam Subhi Issa, who participated in a terrorist attack on Yoel Salomon Street in Jerusalem; Imad Muhammad Aqel, who was assistant to engineer Yahya Ayash; and dozens of other activists who were involved in murders against Israelis.
The revolving door method
Arafat himself arranged for the release of arch-murderers such as A.K., who was involved in planning the double suicide bombing attack in Beit Lid in January 95 in which 22 Israelis were killed; Or Nabil Hassan Salem Sharihi, an Islamic Jihad member who participated in the attack in Kfar Darom (April '95), in which seven Israelis and an American citizen were murdered; and Iyad al-Hassani, the senior jihadist responsible for the suicide bombing at Dizengoff Center in March '96, in which 13 people were murdered. Arafat never imagined handing over dozens of wanted murderers to Israel, or disarming military organizations that continued to operate in his territory, actions to which he had undertaken. He saw Hamas as a patriotic organization.
Shimon Peres. Knowledge to justify, photo: Noam Rivkin Fenton
But the Oslo process, despite all this, continues. Rabin, who originally did not initiate it and was dragged to it by Peres and Yossi Beilin, did not give up. He refused to surrender to the "enemies of peace." One day in late January 1995, the phone rang in my house. On the line was then-President Ezer Weizmann. We had no previous acquaintance. It turned out that he had read my article. "Write," he urged me unexpectedly, "write that they will be arrested, that they will do thinkers. This can't go on like this." Wrote. Before and after that conversation. I didn't stop writing. Not just me, many more, but the process went on and bleeding.
On another occasion, I went on the air on Dalia Yairi's program on Reshet Bet, to tell about the dozens of funerals of the "victims of peace" that I covered as a journalist. Shimon Peres, who was broadcast at the same time, protested to the presenter about the place given in the program to the "opponents of peace." He was more polite when he met terror-victim families on the streets of Oslo who had come to demonstrate against the awarding of the Nobel Prize to him, Rabin and Arafat. Journalist Hagai Segal, who witnessed this event, documented a bereaved mother from Afula who cried for her daughter: "Maya is gone, and no one hears us... We supported you... You could have waited another year for the agreement to prove itself. He didn't prove..." Peres replied: "More would have been killed. Since Oslo, the PLO has stopped engaging in terrorism... The problem we have is with Hamas" (Hagai Segal, "Blood and Champagne," Makor Rishon, 17.08.2018).
Peres, to say the least, was not accurate. Later it became clear how inaccurate he was. In November 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, and Arafat came to console his widow, Leah. Arafat spoke "peace" there, but a few weeks later his representatives agreed with Hamas officials in Cairo that the organization could renew its acts of terror, provided that the traces did not lead to the PA. Terror continued, and an attack was pursued by an attack.
In July 1997, 16 Israelis were murdered and 178 injured in two suicide bombings in the Mahane Yehuda market. A few weeks later, five people were killed and hundreds injured in three simultaneous explosions on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall. The head of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, claimed that there was no evidence that Arafat personally authorized the attacks. Hamas, it turned out in retrospect, managed to disguise the connection well, yet the mask was removed faster than expected. In August, Arafat himself, in a speech in Gaza, called for preparations for war against Israel.
The second intifada officially broke out in September 2000, seven years after Oslo. The PA and Arafat planned it in advance. Contrary to first impressions, she was not spontaneous. Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount was just the excuse. Jibril Rajoub promised the Israelis that if Sharon did not enter the mosque, quiet would be maintained. Sharon did not enter the mosque, and quiet was not maintained. Imad Falluji, one of Arafat's ministers, revealed that the PA had begun preparing the intifada after the failure of the Camp David talks. Mamdouh Nofal also confirmed that everything was planned in advance. Later it became known that Marwan Barghouti had been instructed directly by Arafat to open fire on IDF positions and Jewish transportation on the main roads. Barghouti's deputy, Nasser Awais, was later convicted of planning the attacks at the Seafood Market in Tel Aviv, the David Palace Hall in Hadera and the Jeremy Hotel in Netanya, in which 11 Israelis were murdered.
"Get off the horse's belly"
Years before the Oslo War broke out, Rabin and Peres mocked the "don't give them guns" protest. They claimed that the weapons handed over to the PA had undergone ballistic registration (4,500 rifles, 3,500 pistols, hundreds of machine guns, 8,000 pistols, etc.), but it didn't matter to the Palestinians. They shot dozens of attacks, with weapons that had been registered. Already in 1996, after the Western Wall Tunnel was breached, the "registered weapons" were directed directly and openly against IDF soldiers, killing 17 of them. By the second intifada, the Palestinians were openly fighting "registered weapons" against IDF soldiers. Netanyahu, who first came to power in 1996, tried to slow down the Oslo process, but failed, and in practice, stuck to it when he signed the Wye Accords and evacuated most of Hebron.
Alongside the PA's opposition to a Jewish state, its adherence to the right of return, and the application of the fraudulent model of the Hudayba Accords to the Oslo Accords as well, there was another smoking gun supplied to Israel by East Jerusalem leader Faisal Husseini, but even Israel did not use it.
In an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Arabi on June 24, 2001, Husseini explained that the Palestinians "differentiate between the long-term strategic goals and the goals of the intermediate stages," which they are "temporarily forced to accept because of international pressure. "True," Husseini noted, "we agreed to declare our state in territory that is now only 22% of Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza), but our ultimate goal was and still is to liberate all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea..."
Husseini compared the Oslo Accords to a Trojan horse: "... We all entered the belly of the horse, and the horse itself entered the walls. Now the time has come for us to say: 'Get off the horse's belly' and get to work. Do not stay in the horse's belly and do not waste time and energy arguing whether this horse was good, while you are still in its belly. Here, using this horse you entered the walls. So get down from our stomach, and start working for the purpose for which you entered the horse's belly. In my opinion, the Intifada is the descent from the horse's belly. This is the beginning of the real work for which we entered the horse's belly. This work could have been better, broader and more influential if we had put into our heads from the outset that the Oslo Accords, or any other agreement, are merely a temporary process, or a step towards something broader... Instead of getting into the old arguments..."
The Oslo process was one of the heaviest mistakes ever made by an Israeli government. Two months after it was signed, Yossi Beilin, one of its architects confessed (in an interview with the Maariv newspaper) that he did not sleep soundly at night. "The biggest test of this agreement," he predicted, "will not be an intellectual test—it will be a test of blood."
In a later interview, Larry Shavit in Haaretz (07.03.1997), Beilin recounted a conversation he had with Leah Rabin after Yitzhak's murder. "... I told her: 'If anyone can know what arrangement Rabin had in mind, it's just you.' She said, 'Look, I can't tell you. He was very pragmatic. He hated to deal with what would be many years from now. He thought about what would happen next... He didn't have a clear picture...'"
Couriers of Destiny
Oslo failed. The false magic with which the Israeli leadership was captivated cost Israel more than 1,400 deaths and thousands of injuries, and broke trust with the Palestinians for several generations. The idea that the IDF could rely on the Palestinian Authority to do the work for it turned out to be naïve. Even today, under Mahmoud Abbas, the IDF and Shin Bet are doing most of the work. The PA security apparatuses help Israel only marginally, and mostly do not interfere. Meanwhile.
The poet Yitzhak Shalev once wrote about the heralds from the city officer, the "couriers of fate" passing between the houses of the neighborhoods with the news of death in their mouths. Fate chooses its victims, but death is not always a decree of heaven, and the "victims of peace," as Rabin once called them, have fallen on the altar of a mistaken conception.
For too many years, Israel has remained blind to terror like Samson, without information or preventive intelligence. Everywhere we evacuated, terrorism rose and flourished, and the governments, all of them, added insult to injury by ignoring the glorification of terrorism and martyrdom in the PA, and releasing terrorists with blood on their hands who returned to attack us.
Only in Operation Defensive Shield did Israel regain freedom of action anywhere in Judea and Samaria, but the real soul-searching has not been done to this day. Israel danced a tango with terror, and for years the Israeli leadership conducted itself vis-à-vis the Oslo Accords as a messianic cult captive to its dream.
Even if we ignore for a moment the demands that later arose to establish a commission of inquiry for Oslo and the slogan "Oslo criminals are brought to justice," the fact that to date there has not been a public and extensive public debate on the possibility of canceling the agreements is puzzling and constitutes a certificate of poverty for the State of Israel. This bare minimum – an open, honest, investigative discussion that penetrates abysses and facts – has not yet taken place. Even Israel was incapable of this.
Sources: Maariv, Yedioth Ahronoth, Haaretz, Davar, Al HaMishmar, Palestinian Media Watch, Memri; "Israel Hayom"; supplement "Blood and Champagne" - "Makor Rishon"; Chronicles of the Knesset; Ephraim Karsh, "The Oslo War. Anatomy of Self-Deception," BESA Center
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