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Thirty years later, no one wants to acknowledge the failure of the Oslo Accords [1]

['Benjamin Barthe']

Date: 2023-09-14

US President Bill Clinton with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (left) and PLO leader Yasser Arafat at the White House in Washington on September 13, 1993, during the historic handshake that sealed the Oslo Accords. J. DAVID AKE / AFP

Some world-renowned historic moments see their emotional impact fade over time. We later look back on them with a faint disillusioned smile. On September 13, 1993, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn in Washington. Under the gaze of American President Bill Clinton, the Israeli prime minister and the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had sealed the Oslo Accords.

Thirty years on, the anniversary of the landmark event that was celebrated in Western capitals is met with embarrassment and silence. The hope raised at the time is far from the reality that prevails in Palestine today and none of the world's embassies will be celebrating the Rose Garden ceremony. The greatest concern is that no one has the courage to acknowledge the failure of the Oslo Accords and their underlying principle of two states for two peoples.

The diagnosis is obvious to anyone who makes the effort to travel to the area. The explosion in the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, from 280,000 in 1993 to 700,000 today, coupled with the construction of the separation barrier inside the territory, has transformed it into a completely ungovernable labyrinth of 165 micro-enclaves. Over 90% of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River is under the direct control of Israel.

Creeping annexation since 1967

The rest of the West Bank, called "Area A" under the Oslo Accords, is where the Palestinian Authority (PA) is supposed to have full civil and security control but the Israeli army continues to intervene at will. While this atomization and subjugation of the Palestinian territory has been brought to a climax by the far-right coalition currently in power in Israel, the creeping annexation began as early as 1967 and has been nurtured by right-wing and left-wing forces alike.

In an article published in April by the prestigious magazine Foreign Affairs, four US political science veterans urged the international community to take note of what they called "Israel's one-state reality." "Palestine is not a state in waiting, and Israel is not a democratic state incidentally occupying Palestinian territory," they wrote. "All the territory west of the Jordan River has long constituted a single state, (...) [where] Palestinians are permanently treated as a lower cast. Policymakers and analysts who ignore this one-state reality will be condemned to failure and irrelevance, doing little beyond providing a smokescreen for the entrenchment of the status quo."

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[1] Url: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2023/09/14/thirty-years-after-the-oslo-accords-no-one-wants-to-acknowledge-their-failure_6134578_23.html

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