Israel Hayom..
22 August '13..
We are the children of Oslo, 93 (a parody of the nationally recognized song "the children of winter, 73" about the devastation of the Yom Kippur war) -- as sung by the comedians of the lampoon website Latma -- is a sad satire of the now 20-year-old accords. We were promised doves and olive branches, and instead we got 1,550 terror victims. That is an average of one person every four days over the span of 20 years. The elderly, mothers, babies, teens -- every four days, one is taken.
I would like to be able to defend the architects of the Oslo Accords -- maybe they really did long uncontrollably for peace. But that is not how you achieve peace. Trying to achieve peace by placing the security reins in the enemy's hands is like trying to turn the Earth in the opposite direction. Want peace? What you need to do is get down to work and ensure the physical needs of the civilian population: provide assistance to the Palestinian education system and make sure the incitement against Israel stops; invest in public diplomacy; strike a neighborly relationship on the basis of commerce and a solid economy; initiate meetings in efforts to break barriers. The last thing you should do in order to promote peace is to give up control over security issues, hand out weapons and hand over semi-military sovereignty to the very people who constantly declare that they want to destroy you. Peace is made with enemies, you say? As long as we erect walls and fences and keep things separate, the enemy will forever remain the enemy. I say, peace is made with neighbors, without AK-47s and without fences.
Oslo changed our lives and our world unrecognizably. Before Oslo, with the exception of the airport, we didn't have security checks everywhere we went. We had never seen the black Zaka body bags. We weren't familiar with the phrase "suddenly I heard a boom." There were hardly any foreign laborers -- the agricultural and construction jobs were manned by Palestinians, who also benefited from the calm before "peace" erupted. We didn't know suicide bombings, Qassam rockets, burned buses or headstones for entire families. Relinquishing control over our security and transferring weapons and authorities to the Palestinians created terror bases in the centers of town. The architects of the Olso Accords were highly respected in the glamorous salons of the world, while back here the people were bleeding and dying. Netanya, Jerusalem, Haifa, Sderot, Itamar, Tel Aviv, Gush Katif.
But the people who essentially experimented on humans here and convinced us that the "victims of peace" were a logical sacrifice to make on the altar of happiness are still starring in Israeli politics. Maybe they were naively innocent then, but only a fool trips on the same step over and over and is surprised each time he falls down. They haven't taken off their suits, and they refuse to sober up and abandon their volatile ideas. If they had an iota of humility, they would be ashamed of their failed experiment. But instead, they march forward doing more damage, in the same way, using the same faulty formula.
On the panel show "Politika" on Channel 1, which was dedicated to the Oslo Accords, they had me sitting next to Yossi Beilin (who writes for this paper). The fact that he was sitting next to me and not across from me made it difficult to argue with him, but even more mystifying was the fact that I was presented not as a journalist, but as the "spokeswoman of the Yesha settler council" -- a post I filled eight years ago, for two years. (I was also inexplicably labeled as "extreme Right"). Well, the opponents of the Oslo Accords are apparently the largest group in Israel that actually agrees on anything. Polls indicate that between 65 and 85 percent of the Israeli population believe that the Oslo Accords were a mistake. In the Channel 1 studios, I was one among five people.
As we were sitting in the shiny studio, talking in circles and adding more pointless chatter to a never ending debate, precisely at that time, official Palestinian television aired the new hit song "With the rifle we will impose our new life... O' Palestinians, I want to go and with you attack the snake's head." (Translation courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch).
It was only a year ago that the Palestinian mufti was documented at a Fatah rally quoting the Muslim tradition: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews , when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O' Muslims, O' Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
After hearing this, there is certainly something that must be killed: The Oslo perception. You tried for 20 years. You've caused enough damage. It is time to stop.
Original Title: Never too late to sober up
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5451
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