Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

By Christopher Harper

It’s incredibly ironic and sad that the best chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinians happened almost 30 years ago.

I remember watching in the Rose Garden at the White House as Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands and signed the so-called “Oslo Accords” on September 13, 1993.

For many years, I reported on the Palestinians for Newsweek and ABC News. I spent a lot of time with Arafat and later met Peres. Both saw the accords as the best chance for peace. One U.S. expert wrote recently: “In many respects, the early years of Oslo were a U.S. negotiator’s dream. Israelis and Palestinians had finally done what we had been encouraging them to do for years: get together and work through their own problems themselves.”

What went wrong? The accords were an interim plan. Territory would be transferred gradually to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for its assumption of security responsibilities.

Essentially, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization had different interpretations of the final outcome. For Palestinians, that outcome was an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. For Israel, the government was unwilling to commit to two states. 

Both sides had complex constituencies. Arafat led an organization with so many factions that it was difficult to keep them going in the same direction. These groups include Fatah, Arafat’s group and the largest of the PLO. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was the second-largest faction, mainly because it launched the most effective terrorist operations. But there were groups allied with Iraq, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others. 

Israeli leaders had to govern a country with just as many factions as the PLO. These groups ranged from far-left socialists to conservative religious factions. 

As a result, both sides had to compromise with their constituencies before they could compromise with one another.

For example, Rabin had also locked himself into a public commitment not to dismantle any settlements during the interim period. The settlement issue came to a head when, just after the accords were signed, an Israeli settler killed 29 Palestinians in Hebron, and he did virtually nothing about it because of his promise.

Nevertheless, Rabin was one of Israel’s most sensible and influential leaders. His death in 1995 at the hands of an assassin who opposed any deal with the Palestinians finally put the final nail in the coffin of the agreement. 

The hopes and dreams on that sunny September day 30 years ago came crashing down, leading almost inevitably to the chaos and war that exists now.