After a decade of attending rallies and protests, Yuval Steinitz was certain that peace had finally arrived when the first Oslo Accord was signed on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, exactly 15 years ago this week.
Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
As a philosophy professor at the University of Haifa and an active member of Peace Now, Steinitz recalled that he went out that night with friends to celebrate the dawning of a new era for Israel.
But after two years, as the Palestinians armed themselves in the West Bank and suicide bombers began blowing themselves up in Israel, a disillusioned Steinitz came to the conclusion that instead of fostering peace, the accords that had held so much promise were actually leading Israel on a path to its demise.
"Oslo could have been right. I gave it a chance, but then I had to be a skeptic and reexamine my position. Then I felt that what we did was a terrible mistake," said Steinitz.
"I realized that, to my frustration, we were giving up land for war and terror and incitement," he said.
As the Palestinians continued with their anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric, he worried that "instead of a demilitarized Palestinian state we might end up with a militarized Palestinian state in the center of the country."
By 1995 he began to lobby against the Oslo Accords and in 1999 he left the academic world and successfully ran for Knesset as a member of the right-wing Likud Party, which he has represented in the Knesset ever since.
To his sorrow, said Steinitz, the principles of Oslo remain intact in the Annapolis process and direct negotiations continue between Israeli and the Palestinian leaders, despite the dangers they pose.
His objection to territorial compromise is not rooted in a belief in biblical Israel, but is the outcome of a security analysis, said Steinitz, who is a former head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
"For any foreseeable future I do not see a partner, or any possibility to leave Judea and Samaria or even part of it," he said.
"The idea of a two-state solution should be dead, today, because unfortunately a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria would bring about Israel's demise," he added. Such a Palestinian state, he warned, would "immediately become an outpost for Iran." The Hamas takeover of Gaza less than two years after Israel withdrew from the area was a scenario that could repeat itself in the West Bank, he warned.
The only reason Kassam rockets had not been fired at the center of the country or at Ben-Gurion International Airport was because Israel had a military presence in the West Bank, said Steinitz.
It was true, he said, he was among those in the Likud who supported the Gaza withdrawal in 2005, largely for demographic reasons.
On paper, he said, it was an idea that made sense, but Israel failed in its execution because it did not take certain security measures. In particular, he argued, it should have held onto the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border.
The same demographic considerations are not in play in the West Bank where the birth rate was lower than in Gaza, said Steinitz.
Until there was a reliable partner, Israel should not be engaged in negotiations with the Palestinians, said Steinitz, adding the lack of a Palestinian partner that was committed to peace was the reason Oslo failed.
"We underestimated the pressure coming from the outside Arab world against real peace and real compromise between Israel and the Palestinians," Steinitz said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas talks nicely of peace but he supports terrorism, Steinitz claimed.
When Abbas hugged Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar this summer, who killed three people in Nahariya, including a four-year-old girl, he showed that he was no different than former PA leader Yasser Arafat, Steinitz said.
