Next week marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords, one of the most colossal strategic errors in modern Israel’s history.
Three decades after prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat shook hands as a beaming US president Bill Clinton looked on, the smiles have long ago been erased thanks to the disaster wrought by the agreement.
And since the legacy of that catastrophic capitulation by the Jewish state is still very much with us, it is worth gazing back, however briefly, at the folly of that regrettable attempt to appease terror with territory.
Tossing logic to the wind, and blithely ignoring the warnings of senior IDF officials as well as the opposition, Rabin and foreign minister Shimon Peres inexplicably decided to rescue Arafat from political oblivion.
Despite his ignominious career ordering the hijacking of airlines and cruise ships, plotting school massacres, and reveling in the murder of innocents, Arafat was suddenly granted legitimacy as a “partner” by Israel’s government thanks to Oslo.
In exchange for promising, with a straight face, to make peace, Arafat was subsequently handed the keys to Gaza and Jericho, followed by other cities in Judea and Samaria. He was allowed to bring thousands of PLO terrorists from abroad and was even given arms and ammunition by Israel.
Oslo predictably resulted in blood and terror
Not surprisingly, the aftermath of this turn of events was as bloody and lethal as it was predictable.
Consider the following: In the five years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, more Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists than in the 15 years prior to the agreement. A total of 279 men, women, and children were murdered in the half decade following the Accords, whereas 254 were killed in the 15 years that preceded it.
All told, there have been thousands of Israelis murdered and wounded by Palestinian terror in the past three decades, which is what Oslo was ostensibly supposed to prevent.
Instead, it gave birth not to one, but to two hostile Palestinian entities that now abut the Jewish state: the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, which incites violence, educates youth to murder, and pays terrorists handsomely for their actions; and Hamas-controlled Gaza, which has fired countless rockets at Israeli towns and cities.
In one fell swoop, Oslo emboldened Palestinian terrorists, undermined the Jewish state’s deterrent posture, and divided the Land and people of Israel.
Oslo bequeathed to us unprecedented horrors such as bus bombings, suicide attacks, the kidnapping of soldiers, and the torching of Jewish holy sites.
Rabin and Peres went ahead and gave up plenty of land, but they most certainly did not receive any peace in return.
BY ANY measure, the Oslo experiment was the diplomatic equivalent of the Titanic, a grandiose exercise in hubris that crashed and sank, sending countless innocents to an early grave.
Nevertheless, until today Israel continues to suffer from Oslo, as various American and international leaders persist in their prattle about the necessity of a “two-state solution” and the need to create an independent Palestinian state.
With cult-like certainty, these fantasists continue to preach that conferring statehood on the Palestinians would put an end to the conflict with Israel.
Needless to say, they ignore the Palestinian track record of scuttling negotiations, effectively torpedoing attempts by premiers such as Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert to give them virtually everything they wanted on a silver platter.
Those who continue to mouth the mantra of a “two-state solution” are simply overlooking the obvious lesson that Oslo embodies: Israel must never again give up territory under any circumstances, and most certainly not in exchange for false promises of peace.
We cannot place our security in the hands of others and, no matter what, we must never allow a hostile Palestinian terrorist state to be established in Judea and Samaria, as it would pose a direct threat to the future of the country.
Oslo and its underlying principle of “land for peace” was an illusion founded upon the delusion that appeasing terror, rather than opposing it, was the answer.
But this is not a battle over borders, and it never has been. It is a clash of civilizations, a struggle between the Jewish people, who are reclaiming their ancestral homeland, and our numerous foes.
The fact is that there has never been a Palestinian state in all of history, and there isn’t one now.
And Israel should make clear, once and for all, that there never will be.
Thirty years on, we can say with confidence that Oslo and everything that it stood for is dead. Rather than trying to revive it, we would do well to offer it a fitting eulogy.
The writer served as deputy communications director under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term of office.