Dr. Ron Breiman
Photo: Dor Garbash
Marking the Oslo mistake
Beyond the 1,500 ‘peace victims,’ Oslo Accords undermined Zionist vision
Fifteen years have passed since the most dangerous and painful shift in the State of Israel’s history. On September 13, 1993 the Osloite Israeli government decided to recognize that the Land of Israel is not our country, that the Palestine Liberation Organization is not a terror group, and that “peace” is more important than Zionism. In the wake of the agreement signed with surrealistic joy on the White House lawn, Israel’s erosion and decline got underway both in terms of its internal cohesion as well as the faith in the Zionist vision.
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Chana Givon
Israel desperately needs a government that has national vision as a priority
The common and proper perception is that embarking on war requires internal cohesion and national agreement on the need for such war and its objectives, even in cases where the objectives were not clearly defined. This was the case in the War of Independence, in the Six-Day War (the disagreements emerged years later and did not undermine the war’s justness,) and in the Yom Kippur War. Without these conditions, the management of the war and its outcome would have been marred.
This is true when it comes to peace as well. Peace cannot be achieved by means of coercion and violence, but rather, must be secured through persuasion. When we embark on a peace process without national agreement, and when the process is premised on false assumptions on the one hand and on undermining both the Zionist vision and the civil and property rights of hundreds of thousands of citizens on the other hand, the process cannot succeed.
Even if there is no one answer to the question of what constitutes success, the schisms created within Israeli society in the past 15 years are a direct result of a process whose leaders did not see before them the damage it causes, or alternately, they did see it and knowingly disregarded it.
The road from there to the moral decline that peaked with “disengagement” was short. These days we see a heated-up debate regarding the balance of power between the various branches of government, with many of those taking part in the debate siding with the High Court of Justice, which is supposed to protect minority rights. However, in the “disengagement” affair, which is the continuation and result of Oslo, the High Court failed to adhere to its role as a defender against arbitrariness and aggression. The result was a moral decline that was manifested through the Gaza expulsion and an erosion of the public’s faith in the courts and law enforcement establishment.
Another result of the 15-year-old process, which started with recognizing a terror group and disregarding its objectives, was the blurred distinction between enemy and lover, to the point where those who backed the process forgot and made us forget that an enemy is an enemy is an enemy. This distortion undermined the IDF’s ability to fight it and led us to treat Jews as an enemy. This is how IDF and police forces were trained ahead of carrying out the expulsion, but their inappropriate psychological preparation is a matter for a separate article; this is how they conveyed to the enemy a sense that Israel’s ability to defend itself had been eroded. And so, Nasrallah justly characterized Israel as a spider-web state.
The fatigue of our leaders, rather than public fatigue, later prompted a desire that their unreliable partner, whom they relied on to stay in power, would reconcile itself to signing a shelf agreement. The implication of such agreement is an Israeli abandonment of the heart of the country and its capital, as well as of the Zionist vision that was in place before we had a “Green Line,” “territories,” and “occupation,” and was not limited by this line.
Indeed, beyond the 1,500 “peace victims,” the process’ main damage is the undermined faith in the Zionist vision and its justness. This crisis is manifested in the education system, defense establishment, the media, and the legal system, and it requires an urgent change of direction and a return to the common denominator that used to be in place in the nascent State of Israel: Aliyah and settlement.
We, the graduates of the autumn of 1993 are saying this:
You promised a dove
And an olive branch
You promised peace at home
Yet you brought disagreements and disputes
You promised spring and blooming
Yet you brought expulsion and uprooting
You promised to deliver on pledges
Yet you sold us illusions
You promised a dove
Yet you brought “peace” which is both war and disgrace
Do not evacuate us
Evacuate yourselves from power
And instead of the vision of “peace”
We shall return to Zionism and to Zion
Dr. Ron Breiman was the chairman of Professors for Strong Israel in the years 2001-2005
