Israel Opinion/Ynet..
22 September '13..
The 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and the 20th anniversary of the Oslo Accords were marked at about the same time this year. It's a shame that President Shimon Peres, who served as a minister in both the Golda and Oslo governments, did not take advantage of his status to do some brave national soul-searching about both affairs. Once again, Israel chose to focus solely on the sins (real or imagined) of the 1973 war.
We missed an opportunity to find out, for instance, that the Israeli arrogance which allowed the Egyptians to surprise us on Yom Kippur is very similar to the arrogance that allowed Arafat to move his headquarters from Tunis to Ramallah. Rabin and Peres assumed that, if needed, the IDF would easily be able to restore the previous situation, and apparently they did not believe that Arafat's presence here would create an irreversible situation, from a security standpoint.
More than 1,000 Israeli households joined the family of the bereaved before the army managed to regain control over the West Bank cities during Operation Defensive Shield and dramatically reduce the number of funerals. To this day the army is having a hard time eradicating the rocket fire from Gaza. Not one rocket was fired from Gaza before the Oslo agreement.
In a particularly celebratory article published the day after Oslo process was revealed, author Amos Oz wrote that if the Palestinians continue with the terror "Israel will be able - in accordance with the agreement at hand – to shut down and dismantle Palestine" (Yedioth Ahronoth, August 31, 1993). The Al-Aqsa Intifada and the various IDF operations have proven that Israel cannot close Palestine even when the Palestinians continue with their violence and terror. Territory that has been surrendered cannot be reclaimed so fast.
Despite this, the camp that supports the Oslo deal refuses to bow its head and admit it was wrong. This camp has become significantly smaller over the years, but its hardcore members still claim they were right. Its sophisticated spokespeople take pride in the fact that today Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports the establishment of a Palestinian state, but forget that Rabin himself claimed at the time that the deal between Israel and Arafat will not lead to such a state.
They remind us that there were terror attacks here before Oslo, but by doing so they inadvertently dispel the notion that the agreement was supposed to reduce the number of terror attacks, not increase it. They haven't the guts to make a true comparison between the vision and the reality.
Instead of repeatedly going over the secret protocols of 1973, Israelis would be wise to review the non-confidential protocols of 1993.
Link: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4431665,00.html
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