The Oslo Accords, after 25 Years, Have Left Israel with a Situation It Can Neither Accept nor Be Rid Of

Twenty-five years ago today, Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas signed the Oslo Accords in secret. The public ceremony on the White House lawn, with Yitzḥak Rabin and Yasir Arafat representing their respective peoples, took place three weeks later. Eyal Zisser takes stock of this “experiment,” which, in his mind, failed:

As could be expected, the Palestinian leadership found it difficult to meet the commitments it took upon itself—and quite possibly never even intended [to meet them]. The Palestinian Authority never tried to prepare the Palestinian public for the concessions that would be necessary in order to make peace. Worse still, it refused to abandon the use of violence and terrorism as a means to achieving its goals, leaving many Israelis skeptical of the plan.

An interview that Mohammed Dahlan, [still] seen by many as a possible successor to Abbas, gave at the height of the second intifada illustrates this point quite well. When asked whether the Oslo Accords had been a mistake, Dahlan replied that the agreement had laid the groundwork for the struggle against Israel. As proof, he said, . . . the number of Israelis killed in the second intifada, [which, unlike the first, took place after the signing of the accords] was “100-times higher” than the number of Israelis killed in the first. (In fact, it was about three-and-a-half times higher.)

This is all water under the bridge, but from Israel’s standpoint, the problem lies in the reality created by the accord; a reality that, while meant to be temporary in nature, has become permanent. The Palestinian Authority and the Hamas regime in Gaza have become faits accomplis—bones in Israel’s throat it can neither eject nor swallow. This is a problematic reality, which continues to present endless political and security challenges for Israel.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Israel & Zionism, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Mahmoud Abbas, Oslo Accords, Second Intifada, Yasir Arafat

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society