The Intelligence Failure behind the Oslo Accords

Sept. 28 2023

With the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War—last Monday on the Jewish calendar, and next week on the Gregorian—Israelis are revisiting the inability of their intelligence agencies to predict an Arab attack. Ze’ev Begin and Yigal Carmon, meanwhile, focus on a different anniversary, and a different lapse. Why they ask, didn’t security officials see the evidence that Yasir Arafat had no intention of ending his conflict with the Jewish state following the signing of the Oslo Accords—despite the fact that he said so publicly on numerous occasions?

At the time, the majority of the Israeli public were in favor of the peace offered by the Oslo Accords, and Israel’s intelligence analysts were not immune to the spirit of the times. . . . Julius Caesar noted that “men are quick to believe that which they wish to be true,” thereby removing certain defense mechanisms. . . . The public discourse about the speeches by Arafat and other top PLO officials was limited, since raising doubts about Arafat’s true intentions was considered to be undermining the great ideal of peace that was supposedly being realized.

Indeed, the misinterpretation of Arafat’s actions and their significance was reinforced socially. Those who publicly raised the issue of the PLO leadership’s incitement against Israel were accused of being motivated only by their political disposition. In addition, a false symmetry emerged in the eyes of the Israeli public between the Israeli side and the Palestinian side: Israeli opponents of Oslo were considered opponents of peace, and the Israeli government a pursuer of peace; therefore, since Hamas was an opponent of peace, it must be that the PLO was also a pursuer of peace, like the Israeli government.

For a long time, . . . as evidence was piling up that Arafat and his group were grossly violating the Accords, the Israeli public was willing to accept the bizarre explanation that these violations were in fact necessary for the sake of peace: Israel signed an agreement with Arafat; in order to implement the agreement Arafat must politically survive among his people; to survive, he must violate the agreements [with anti-Israel incitement and the like]. In other words, the agreement between Israel and the PLO could only be implemented by being violated.

Read more at MEMRI

More about: Intelligence, Oslo Accords, Yasir Arafat

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023