25 years of Oslo failure slammed at Knesset conference
“Twenty-five years ago, the Palestinians were in a terrific situation. Israelis and Palestinians worked together in Hebron. How many people have been killed since 1993? We haven’t achieved anything.”
By GIL HOFFMANUpdated: JULY 4, 2018 03:07A gaping hole is left in the shop front of the Sbarro pizzeria after a suicide bombing, August 9, 2001(photo credit: REUTERS)
The Oslo agreements have failed not only the people of Israel but also the Palestinians, speaker after speaker said Tuesday at a conference of the Knesset’s Israel Victory Caucus called “25 years of Oslo, time for rethinking.”The caucus and the conference were sponsored by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, a right-wing think tank headed by Daniel Pipes.“Ending the Palestinian dream of destroying Israel is not only good for Israel but also good for the Palestinians,” Pipes said. “Their rejectionism has been a tremendous burden for the Palestinians who have suffered.Once liberated from their dream of destroying Israel, they can work on building their own polity.”Middle East Forum director Gregg Roman said he hoped one day a US president would wake up one day and ask what alternative there was to peace processes that have failed and that the president would be told about the forum’s Israel Victory Project.The Israel Victory Project is an initiative by the forum to steer American policy toward an Israeli victory over the Palestinians that would resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. To that end, the project founded caucuses in Congress and the Knesset and has advised key officials of the Trump administration on the concept of Israel Victory and its requisite policies.The co-chairman of the caucus in the Knesset, Yisrael Beytenu MK Oded Forer, said a statement by Palestinian officials calling the Knesset’s decision to remove funding for the PA that went to terrorists and their families “a declaration of war” indicated that for them, the war had not ended.“They need to know they lost the war for peace to be possible,” Forer said.Likud MK Avraham Neguise, who also co-chairs the caucus, said Israel must say loudly and clearly that Oslo had failed, because of the failure of the Palestinians to accept Israel’s existence.The highlight of the event was a speech by Ashraf Jabari, a prominent Palestinian-Arab businessman and community leader from Hebron. He complained that the Palestinian Authority was not helping the Palestinian people, even though it had received huge sums from the international community, including some $7 billion from the US that he said he heard about from US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.“How has Oslo helped the Palestinians?” Jabari asked.“Twenty-five years ago, the Palestinians were in a terrific situation.Israelis and Palestinians worked together in Hebron.How many people have been killed since 1993? We haven’t achieved anything.”Jabari called for there to be a one-state solution under Israeli sovereignty instead of the twostate solution sought by the Oslo Accords.“There is no solution until we all live under the sovereignty of the State of Israel,” he said.“We can live together without hatred. We have to stop enough violence and terror. We have to continue together, shoulder to shoulder, in order to succeed.”
