The Palestinian Authority Is Threatening Deliberate Violation of the Oslo Accords

A week ago, the Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, after spuriously accusing the Israeli government of violating the Oslo Accords, announced that the PA will henceforth begin to build housing in Area C—the part of the West Bank that the Accords leave under exclusive Israeli control. Yoni Ben-Menachem writes:

It appears that . . . the PA has begun a process of disengagement from Israel and the agreements with it. This means that any attempt to build homes in Areas B and C in breach of the Oslo Accords could lead to clashes between the IDF and Palestinian civilians engaged in the building, and possibly also between the IDF and the Palestinian security forces. With these decisions, the PA is trying unilaterally to take over parts of the West Bank and to establish facts on the ground—not through negotiations and in blatant violation of the Oslo Accords.

Last month Prime Minister Shtayyeh visited Jordan and Iraq and signed a series of economic agreements in the fields of trade, health, energy, and natural resources. The PA has also stopped sending patients to Israeli hospitals for treatment [in order] to stop adding to these hospitals’ revenues. Shtayyeh is also planning to visit Egypt shortly and sign economic agreements there.

Israel must not fall asleep at the wheel; it needs . . . to warn the PA publicly that unilaterally ignoring the division of the West Bank into three areas stipulated by the Oslo Accords is a grave infringement and will lead to harsh Israeli reactions. . . . The PA must not be allowed to establish facts on the ground that will affect the final status of the West Bank.

Read more at Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

More about: Oslo Accords, Palestinian Authority, West Bank

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF