The Failure of Oslo: Charting a New Course

Hanan Ashrawi

Overview: As of November 16, at least 220 people were dead and more than 7,000 injured—90 percent of them Palestinians shot by Israeli forces—due to the violence in the Occupied Territories and Israel which has lasted more than six weeks. This tragic period of total breakdown and confrontation did not come as a surprise to critics of the current peace negotiations. Rather, the built-in flaws of the Oslo "peace process" have led to this eruption.

Misrepresentation of Reality: The United States’ short-sighted and superficial understanding of its role as an "honest" peace broker in the Oslo process has helped to create the current crisis. Washington has failed to recognize the requirements for a just peace, what is an acceptable minimum for the Palestinian people, and that short term gains for Israel may be long term losses for all the parties in the region, and for a lasting peace. The United States has placed an undue emphasis on the process itself, as though this were the objective rather than actual peace.

Instead of focusing on the substance of the conversations between Israel and the Palestinians, the United States has regarded the simple fact that the two groups were talking as the panacea to the conflict. To compound this problem, there has been a real misunderstanding, or even a total dismissal, of Palestinian rights because of the weakness of the Palestinians as compared to Israel. The United States has assumed that the Palestinians would accept an outcome imposed unilaterally by Israel—based on what Israel and its citizens are willing to accept—instead of understanding that a real partnership also requires an understanding of what will work in Palestine, and what can be sustained by and acceptable to the Palestinian people.

The United States’ failure as an honest peace broker, its lack of strategic foresight, and its insufficient commitment to peace have led to the tragedy we are witnessing now. The United States needs to show political will and demonstrate that there is such a thing as U.S. policy consistent with international law and UN resolutions—otherwise Washington will continue to undermine peace in the region. Any agreements arrived at outside of the framework of international law will lead to a temporary truce rather than long term peace. Injustices will perpetuate the conflict.

The U.S. view that what is necessary is to simply get the process "back on track" is faulty because the track has been leading in the wrong direction. We need to chart a new course, a new direction. Any serious and responsible attempts to seek peace should take into account the tragic and painful lessons of the last six weeks.

Imbalance of Power Unacknowledged: The United States’ willingness to support Israel as it pushes forward its own agenda while dismissing the Palestinians’ goals, or even their minimum rights, has strengthened an already skewed relationship and false symmetry. Washington’s apparent assumption that there are two independent states negotiating equally on issues, while in reality there is an occupying power and an occupied people, makes achieving peace extremely difficult.

Meanwhile, Israel can continue to use its tremendous powers—with little accountability—to create facts on the ground that are antithetical to the peace process and the requirements of peace. These actions include ongoing settlement expansion, land confiscation, and home demolitions, as well as the excessive force it is now using against the Palestinians. Israel, as the occupier, perpetuates measures on the ground which maximize their short-term gain and further victimize the Palestinians.

In spite of this reality, the language used by U.S. officials and the media which calls on "both sides" to stop the violence fails to recognize this asymmetry of power. Their statements are based on the false premise that there are two armies of relatively equal power fighting each other. In reality, there is one army besieging a captive civilian population by strangling cities, towns, villages, and refugee camps, and by using its military might against primarily civilians.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright exemplified this inaccurate view of Israel as the victim in the conflict when she said that Palestinians have placed Israel "under siege" during the current crisis. This statement betrays a total lack of understanding of reality as to who is being besieged and who is willfully conducting a very destructive military campaign. Implicit is a denial of the Palestinian people’s right to protest or to demonstrate on their own land. The Palestinians are the ones living under occupation, and they are responding in self-defense against the occupier’s aggression. To put it simply, according to international law, the Israeli military does not have a legal right to be in the Occupied Territories.

Israel’s Control of Oslo: If the U.S. wants to engage in a process that will lead to genuine peace, there cannot be a return to the status quo ante or "business as usual." The total disregard for Palestinian and Arab public opinion, and little understanding of the long term implications of Israel’s policies, cannot continue.

Israel has been able to hijack the Oslo process. The United States has repeatedly permitted Israel to renege on agreements, even as feeble as they were initially. There is an attempt to reshape and reinvent the process to suit Israel without respecting the terms of reference that all parties had signed on to in the beginning. The framework of the agreement is based on United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 242 and the reaffirming UNSCR 338 which call for a withdrawal from the territories Israel occupied in 1967, which include East Jerusalem.

Adopting the Israeli discourse has resulted in a misrepresentation of the issues and a deliberate distortion of reality based on the assumption that Israeli priorities can prevail. This approach involves a narrow short term Israeli gain at the expense of long term American strategic interests, stability in the region, the role of the United States as an "honest" peace broker, and even Israeli interests as a country of peace rather than a rogue state in the region that is victimizing the Palestinians and destabilizing the area.

As was clearly evident at Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is fragmenting the West Bank in order to impose a racist, punitive separation from Israel. Barak’s idea of separation would include Israel’s control over Palestinian borders, the territories within Palestine, and the settlements. He is developing a reality that would create a new type of occupation as a permanent "solution." If this plan succeeds, it will cause further destabilization and will totally destroy the possibilities for peace and a two-state solution. The Israeli government is attempting to impose a unilateral separation whereby there will be constant Palestinian victimization and continuing Israeli land acquisition by force. This will ultimately lead to the one-state solution. Israel will no longer have a Jewish state, but gradually, in a generation or two, there will be new demographic reality involving one bi-national state with a Palestinian majority. In the meantime, there will be conflict, instability, and further loss of life.

Key Recommendations

(1) The international community should insist that Israel immediately withdraw from populated Palestinian areas and stop using excessive force against civilians through the use of gunships, tanks, and other military hardware. (2) Israel should accept an international presence on the ground and comply with international law. (3) There should be a period of reassessment to evaluate the shortcomings and flaws in the process itself, and then to extend the process to involve other participants including the UN, the European Union, and the Arab states. The attempt to achieve peace should be a collective endeavor and not just a U.S. monopoly. (4) The U.S. should realize that the Palestinian cause remains a crucial factor in the region’s stability, and that the Arab people as a whole sympathize and identify tremendously with the Palestinians. The United States should not assume that because a few individuals or leaders in the Arab world can be pressured into accepting a U.S. version of reality, then the Arab public—or for that matter, the rest of the world—will also accept this approach.

Hanan Ashrawi is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. The above text may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the author and to the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine.