The 1993 Oslo Accords failed to end the Israel-Palestine conflict, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alternative is much worse.
Thirty years ago, on Sept. 13, 1993, I sat on a folding chair in the sunshine on the White House lawn, along with 3,000 other witnesses, watching President Bill Clinton nudge a reluctant Israeli prime minister and the ebullient chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization into shaking hands.
The Fatah hawks were Gazan members of Arafat’s Fatah party, not the PLO men he brought back from abroad. Most had served time in Israeli prisons, spoke Hebrew, and had some grasp of Israeli society. They were angered by Arafat’s refusal to crush Hamas and other Islamist groups that opposed Oslo. They believed this could undercut the agreement — and they spoke openly of wanting to end the conflict with two states, so they could start living normal lives.
I still believe that, even though Rabin had serious doubts about a Palestinian state, he was the only Israeli leader tough and farsighted enough to convince Arafat to face reality and conclude a deal. A brief, brave effort in 2008 by center-right Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came too late.Over the following years, I watched both Arafat and Israeli leaders take steps that destroyed public confidence in the Oslo process.
But the 2000 Israeli presidential election brought the right-wing Likud candidate Ariel Sharon to power. Israeli voters in the liberal German Colony neighborhood whispered to me, as if afraid to let their friends hear, that they would vote for the right this one time because Sharon would stop the terror attacks. That was the start of a long-rightward trend in Israeli presidential politics, during which Benjamin Netanyahu has served as prime minister for 15 years.
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