Oslo Accords a big mistake, analysts say

Palestinians offered Israel ‘a golden and unique’ recognition and got nothing in return

Gassan Al Khatib, a former member of the Palestinian delegation at the peace talks going on in Washington in parallel to the secret negotiations in Oslo in 1993, still recalls the Palestinian reaction to the backchannel talks.

Those involved in the formal talks, including Al Khatib, “didn’t like the fact that there were back-channel negotiations they were unaware of”. Many opposed it and Al Khatib refused to attend the signing ceremony at the White House on September 13, 1993.

“Oslo Accords were really a mistake. I believe the Palestinian leadership made a big mistake by agreeing to it,” Al Khatib told Gulf News.

“Palestinians did not have to go for such a deal. Had the [formal] talks in Washington, which followed the Madrid peace conference, continued, we would have ended up with either a better deal, or a status quo and that would have been better for us. But Oslo was a mistake,” said Al Khatib, who has held several positions in the Palestinian National Authority that were established after the signing of the deal.

The Oslo talks, which took place in a two-floor house located on a hilltop in the Norwegian capital, were held in top secrecy and under tight security.

Al Khatib, who runs a polling and survey centre, said at that time most Palestinians were optimistic the deal would signal an end to their suffering. “The opinion polls [in 1993] showed that 70 per cent of Palestinians supported the deal. This went on going downwards until it reached 26 per cent in a poll conducted in March this year,” he said.

According to analysts, Palestinians saw in the deal a prelude to the independent state they had dreamt of and fought for. However, today, when they look back, they say its lack of a clear timetable and details hindered the implementation of the accord. Also, the US bias towards Israel and Washington’s monopoly of sponsorship of the talks hindered achievement of results. Other reasons relate to the “drastic changes” inside Israel, and its shift to the extreme right, coupled with “weak Palestinian performance”, analysts said.

Oslo postponed talks on the most difficult and sensitive issues to the final stage that never came. Those issues included borders, water, refugees, security and the fate of occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinians want occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

According to analysts, Palestinians saw in the deal a prelude to the independent state they dreamt of. However, when they look back, they say its lack of a clear timetable and details hindered the implementation.

‘An escape’

“In my view, Oslo was sort of an escape by [late Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat from a bitter Arab reality,” said Khattar Abu Diab, from the Paris-based Council on Geopolitics and Perspectives. He said some Arab regimes that took tough positions against Israel, including Iraq, Libya and Syria, sought to have control over the Palestinians. Arafat thought he could improve the outcome of Oslo, but that was difficult.”

However, according to political scientists, Oslo did achieve some goals for the Palestinians. It established “for the first time, a Palestinian entity inside a part of historical Palestine, the PNA, regardless of the size of that piece”, said political scientist Tarek Fahmy, who also heads the Israeli unit at the National Centre for Middle East Studies in Cairo. It also defines “temporary borders” between the Palestinians and Israelis.

On the other hand, it failed to implement other parts of the deal and was unsuccessful in defining the responsibilities of each side, he said. “It was more than autonomy, but less than a state,” Fahmy said. He believes today “no one will dare to annul the Oslo Accords and dissolve the PNA, because the alternative is total chaos”.

However, from an Israeli perspective, the regime won recognition from Palestinians. Palestinians recognised Israel’s right to exist, and Israel recognised the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, in line with the Oslo Accords.

“That was a golden and unique recognition,” said Palestinian analyst Khalil Shaheen. “No freedom movement ever gave a recognition to the occupying force to stay on its land,” Shaheen told Gulf News.

There are currently discussions among Palestinians to suspend that recognition.