Oslo accords between Palestinians and Israeli: 20 year-old already? What was achieved?
Posted on: September 14, 2013
Oslo accords between Palestinians and Israeli: 20 year-old already? What was achieved?
US secretary of state Kerry has restarted the negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, and we heard nothing about “these secret negotiations” and whether they resumed, and for how long, and how serious is the US administration to pull off these negotiations and what coercive mechanisms on Israel it has in its bags…
Noura Erakat posted on FB this Sept 13, 2013:
The Oslo accords are twenty years old today, during the Clinton administration in 1993, between Rabin and Arafat in the White House Lawn.
It was supposed to gradually relinquish territories to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Could anything signify its failure more boldly than the fact that no one cares?
That may be one more of its many successes to contain and remove this conflict from central consideration.
Rather than resolve the conflict, Oslo has managed the conflict while making Israel’s settler-expansionism less egregious to the international community.
Talks have supplanted resistance, process has supplanted substance.
The result is a dire situation where the possibility of two states is dead: Palestinians are more fragmented politically and culturally from one another, and the Palestinian leadership has become a central part of the occupation regime rather than the political force that leads a multi-faceted strategy including grassroots, diplomatic, legal, and media tactics to resist it.
A few facts to consider:
1. Military Order 1650 institutionalizes separation of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank and “deports” Palestinians from Gaza found in West Bank back to Gaza further entrenching fragmentation.
2. 85% of the Annexation Wall (or Wall of Shame) runs through the West Bank and expropriates 13% of the land;
3. Settler-population has grown from 200,000 in 1993 (time of the signing of the Oslo accord) to 600,000 today.
4. Settlement expansion is now entrenched in 62% of West Bank (all of Area C).
5. Israel has declared 18% of the West Bank into a firing zone where first soldiers practice shooting and then leave to make room for a new Jewish-only settlement.
6. Gaza has been under full naval blockade and land siege for 6 years and counting.
7. Lack of control over water has led to forced displacement of farmers and cost the Palestinian economy 110,000 jobs and 10% of its annual GDP.
8. Spending on agriculture has dropped from 28.5% of Palestinian national budget in 1993 to less then 5% today. In contrast, spending on security is up to 30%.
Oslo has made all this possible while neutralizing a Palestinian leadership from resisting these conditions.
Even the most ardent supporters of the two states solution should oppose Oslo.
More of the same is only a recipe for long-term instability and insecurity.
We should celebrate this anniversary by making sure it’s the last year we commemorate Oslo.
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