Moshe Arens: From Oslo to the Al Aqsa Intifada - defeat being pulled from the jaws of victory

By (Likud MK) Moshe Arens Ha'aretz 14 November 2000

A straight line leads from the agreements concluded by the Rabin government with the PLO at Oslo eight years ago to the Al Aqsa Intifada Yasser Arafat has been waging against Israel these past few weeks, using guns Israel provided him as part of the Oslo deal.The line passes through the Hebron and Wye agreements concluded by the Netanyahu government; the first leaving the Jewish community in Hebron dangerously exposed to attack from Palestinian gunmen in Hebron, the second providing for excessive U.S. involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, eventually leading to U.S. support for Palestinian negotiators, eventually leading to U.S. support for Palestinian demands.

The line continues to the far-reaching concessions Ehud Barak presented at the recent Camp David summit, called at his behest, and terminates with nightly attacks against Gilo, the Jewish quarter of Hebron, and the settlement of Psagot. At all of the stations along this line Arafat's perception that Palestinian use of force was effective in making Israel retreat was reinforced. That Israelis were desperately eager for an agreement with the Palestinians, that they did not have the staying power for a prolonged confrontation, and that therefore the ultimate Palestinian goals were attainable by a staged process that would involve negotiations alternating with the use of violence and terror against Israel.

It is useful to view the developments of the past few years against the background of the history over a hundred years of Jewish-Arab conflict, and in particular in light of the consistent Israeli victories against repeated Arab attempts to destroy the Jewish state during the first 25 years of its existence, culminating in the Egyptian-Syrian attack against Israel on Yom Kippur of 1973, and the subsequent defeat of the Egyptian and Syrian armies by the IDF. There is little doubt that as a result of this defeat some in the Arab World, Egypt first and foremost, concluded that Israel could not be toppled by force and that there was no alternative to a negotiated settlement. There followed the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979.

There is little doubt that the IDF's operation in Lebanon in 1982, that led to the expulsion of Yasser Arafat and his PLO forces from Lebanon and their transfer to far-away Tunis, even if it did not lead to the realization of all of Israel's goals at the time, reinforced the Arab perception of Israeli strength and the limitations of Arab military capabilities in matching that strength.

The Intifada that broke out in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in 1987 - an insurrection by Palestinian civilians against Israeli rule in the territories - was a clear indication that the Palestinians there had despaired of effective assistance by the armies of the neighboring Arab states. They decided to take matters into their own hands in the hope that Israel would find it difficult to contend with confrontations with the civilian population. In the first years of the Intifada they were proven right. International television coverage showing Palestinian civilians, many of them women, facing Israeli soldiers in full battle dress naturally aroused world sympathy, including in Israel itself, for the Palestinian cause. Rabin's policy, calling on Israeli soldiers to break the bones of the Palestinian demonstrators, was brutal, crude, ineffective, and finally counter-productive. It was only when he was succeeded at the Defense Ministry by myself in 1990 that Israeli tactics became more sophisticated and more effective. By the summer of 1992 the Intifada was over - it had run out of steam and exhausted itself.

It was at this point, the insurrection defeated, Arafat and his PLO cohorts in faraway Tunis, that the Israeli architects of the Oslo accords decided to pick the defeated and exhausted Arafat off the floor, extend to him Israel's recognition as the partner for negotiations and thus foist him and his associates on the Palestinian population in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, while giving implied Israeli recognition to his demand for the "right of return" for his Palestinian Diaspora constituency. There is probably no example in history to equal this case of defeat being pulled from the jaws of victory.

From thereon it was downhill all the way for Israel. The hasty withdrawal of the IDF from the security zone in Lebanon and abandonment of the SLA under pressure of the Hezbollah militia was further indication that Israel's military prowess could be worn down and defeated by sustained guerrilla activity carried out by small militia forces. What the Hezbollah had succeeded in doing in southern Lebanon, the Palestinians were going to try to achieve on home ground.

Barak's offer of large-scale concessions at the Camp David summit was the last straw. Here was a clear indication that Israel had no stomach for further confrontations with the Palestinians. That with sustained pressure they would be able to be granted all their wishes. That now was the time to leave the negotiating table and resume violence.

That is where we are at the moment. Should we not be able to prove that Arafat will gain nothing by the use of violence we may be in for far worse in the future.