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Oslo Revisited
Ehud Ya'ari (Jerusalem Report)
Ehud Ya'ari: Left must recognize that Oslo ITSELF is a failure - not just Arafat Israelis have reached a general consensus about Arafat, but not about the process that brought him into our neighborhood. It has become very fashionable in Israel to sit around taking Yasser Arafat to pieces. He's being swamped with invective from the right, of course, but also from the left regarding his personality, his character traits and his political conduct. The image of the rais wasn't exactly snow-white even before the new intifada. It is now, in my view, absolutely and indelibly stained. Even Prof. Amiram Goldblum, one of the founding fathers of Peace Now, recently saw fit to mention the "sausagey fingers" of Arafat, "a man who hasn't done a decent day's work in his life," and even went on to relate how he was overcome by nausea when Arafat once slopped wet kisses on a colleague. Suffice it to say that Arafat is now perceived across the board as a leader with zero credibility, a rich repertoire of lies and an obsession for bloodshed. We are coming to the end of an important process: the redefinition of the image of Arafat. A resounding majority of Israelis believe that he can't be trusted, even if they see no better alternative than continuing to negotiate with him. The confusion that reigned in the first months of the latest violence - over whether Arafat had wanted the confrontation in the first place and whether he controlled it - has been belatedly resolved: It has become patently clear that Arafat has the ability to impose a cease-fire of 80-90 percent efficacy without having to go to any more trouble than handing out orders and holding a few heart-to-hearts with the heads of Hamas and the Tanzim. Arafat is aware that he has exposed his flank with his instruction for a cease-fire. From this moment on, he is to be held responsible for everything that has happened so far, and for everything that happens from here on. Hamas is no longer seen by the average Israeli as a rival to Arafat, but rather as one of his more sophisticated weapons. He may have, in a few perfunctory words, condemned the terrible suicide attack at the entrance of a Tel Aviv teenagers' nightclub, but there isn't a single clear-headed Israeli who doesn't hold him responsible for the terror. What is amazing is that Israelis have reached a general consensus about Arafat, but not about the process that brought him into our neighborhood. Both in the political community and among the wider public, a bizarre distinction is made between the Oslo Accords and Arafat, with whom they were reached. According to various public-opinion polls and the political laboratory of TV and radio talk shows, the 60-70 percent majority which supported Oslo is still not ready to subject that process to a reassessment in the same way that it has reconsidered the attitude to Arafat. It is as if Arafat the man and what he represents are not the very essence of Oslo. Thus, Oslo still hovers in the throes of death over the shattered image of its co-architect. Ironically, it is Arafat and his various spokespeople who have totally stopped referring to Oslo in the past few months. At most they talk of the need to implement "previous agreements," without specifically naming them. The name Oslo is articulated only by those Palestinian forces eager to see its public, official and immediate burial. In Israel too, the name Oslo mostly appears in the lexicon of its opponents. Even Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin refer to Oslo, and their role in it, as little as possible. Oslo has almost, though still not quite, become a dirty word. The inherent contradiction between the change in perception regarding Arafat and the sticking to positions regarding Oslo raises a serious danger: Any further dealings with Arafat will remain within the general outline of Oslo. It will mean yielding other bits of territory - like Haim Ramon's suggestion of a 10 percent third redeployment and/or the voices being raised in favor of evacuating the settlements of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. Peres probably has this kind of approach in his saddlebag as he presses the Americans to present Sharon with a written proposal, backed up by wide international support, for the implementation of the Mitchell Report. Proceeding along such a track would be an evasion of extracting any lessons from the mistake Israel originally made by bringing Arafat in. If the working assumption of Oslo was that the accords would serve as a kind of filter for the purification of Arafat and of the PLO, it has now been proven that no such transformation has occurred. Indeed, any future arrangement of a similar ilk won't work either, and at the end of the day, we'll be facing the same Arafat, only stronger. Instead of neutralizing his explosive force by penning him into a "sovereign fold," he'll be hopping over to new autonomous bridgeheads. The sobering-up about Arafat must be coupled with the conclusion that Oslo was a bold experiment with positive goals but, expectedly, a failure. Tremendous value could be gained from a public recognition of that fact, particularly by the Israeli left, which has shown itself ready to engage in open soul-searching when it comes to Arafat. Only by revisiting Oslo will the way open up for new, more effective formulas.
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