Reflections on three decades of the Oslo Accords

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The Oslo Accords were signed three decades ago on September 13, 1993. While the anniversary of the attempt to resolve the particular Israeli-Palestinian Arab aspect of the much larger Arab-Israeli dispute passed almost unnoticed in the United States, it garnered considerable attention in Israel.  The tone of the anniversary was, however, neither a festive moment of nostalgia nor a celebration of progress.  It was almost universally marked in Israel as a sort of autopsy of a catastrophe.

Israel had good reason to broach the issue with bitter reflection. The dream of peace had yielded to the nightmare of death as thousands of Israelis and even more Palestinian Arabs died in terror attacks and war. The hope for prosperity instead had transformed into the burden of increased defense spending as Israel developed and bought anti-missile systems and faced periodic national shutdowns (and material damage) due to wars every two or three years.

The political consequences of Oslo have also been significant. The violence and constant tensions have rendered the Israeli left, which birthed the Oslo Accords, largely unelectable. Moreover, the reflections and self-critique in Israel over the deal’s consequences have also ranged increasingly into analyses of the behavior of the government caused by the Oslo Accords. Parliamentary approval for Oslo II had been obtained by bribing a small party with ministerial portfolios, and the distortions of the governance and public debate it engendered has loomed larger by the year. The publicly available information about the bad faith approach the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) carried into the agreement was suppressed in both internal government structures, intelligence, and in the press, impugning the reputation of both.

There is little to add to the volumes of commentary within Israel about the deleterious impact of the agreement internally to Israel and externally to the region.  But there has been almost nothing written – either in Israel or the United States — discussing the impact of the agreement on geopolitics and global political trends. Yet, it is perhaps that area in which the greatest damage was done by the Oslo Accords not only to Israel, but far beyond.

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Life of Lt. Gen. Yitzhak Rabin, 7th IDF Chief of Staff in photos by Israel Defense Forces is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0