It’s funny how sometimes history repeats itself. In this case even the characters involved remain almost the same.
The left side of the political map in Israel, at least on the parliamentary level has suffered a great deal of losses in recent years. The left side of the 120-member Israeli parliament includes currently four Members of Knesset (MKs) from Hadash (Arab/Jewish socialist/communist), three from Meretz and, to some, very small degree, 13 from the labor party (which joined the coalition with the right wing parties). That is, one sixth of the parliament – if you expand very generously the meaning of the term “left”.
The discussion evoked by this downfall – what caused it, etc. – is long, often boring and a subject matter for a different post. But one of the milestones in this slope is the short time in which current “defense” minister, Ehud Barak, served as prime minister. In 1999 Barak defeated then former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (rings a bell?). His victory was the source of a great deal of hope – I still remember the almost euphoric feelings of this evening. This hope was short lived. By the time Barak was kicked out of office, the second intifada was well underway. If Netanyahu did his best to ruin the Oslo accords (I’ll disregard here the fallacies of those accords), Barak made sure to kill them completely.
The lie that had since circulated around Israel, a lie that many believe to this very day, is that “Barak offered Arafat everything, more than anyone before him (this part may actually be true, but it’s irrelevant), but Arafat declined his generous offers and chose to begin the Intifada instead”. In reality, Barak’s offers were such that no Arab leader could accept. The proposed territory offered lacked any resemblance to a unified territory, it was much more like an archipelago with Israeli settlements dotting its landscape and Israeli controlled areas dividing it. the lie also claims that east Jerusalem would have been the new capital of the Palestinian state. Again, wrong. In reality, Abu Dis, a Palestinian village outside Jerusalem, was christened as east Jerusalem in order to fulfill its destiny as a capital.
And to top it all, Barak insisted on adding one more little clause – the Palestinians were to proclaim “the end of the conflict”; Seemingly a harmless clause, but in reality, one that only serves to say: “this is it, take it or shove it up your collective behinds”.
The summit ended with a bang. The following October Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount served as the match that ignited the second intifada. Arafat’s true face was revealed.
And this brings me back to the beginning of the post. The last clause? The cherry on the top? Guess who made it resurface a mere day before a doomed new summit was about to take place. Read the second part of this article. (I actually read another article that quotes Barak using the same sentence exactly, but this is the only one I found in English. The spirit of things is the same).
It’s funny how history repeats itself. Oh, wait, not funny
I could not resist myself…
Hebrew:
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/946/768.html?hp=1&loc=31&tmp=1813
English:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgpc4hc9_136d88g8fcg
Bareket, I’ll comment on your post on Yom Kipur.
Dear Or Bareket,
In what follows, the word ‘Arabs’ in my dictionary should be translated into ‘Palestinians and their Arabic allies’ in yours.
1) I agree with you that one sixth is a very generous estimation regarding the hold of the leftists in our parliament.
2) The victory of Barak was a hope to some, but despair to others. It was despair to those who have already waked-up from what was seen to be a childish dream, into the nightmare of a violent reality.
3) No one can bring alive a corpse. The Oslo agreements are a baby born dead for three reasons:
a) The agreements came out of a well-planned deception, as the Arabs admitted in countless occasions. And what’s born in a lie is doomed to collapse in a lie.
b) From the Arab side, and already from the outset, no one had intentions (whatsoever) to reconcile the existence of a Jewish state within the region of the Middle East. This has been admitted by Arab leaders many times ever since.
c) The Arabic education system did not take the necessary shift required to make peace between the *people* on both sides of the fence. Instead of educating toward peace and reconciliation, it strengthened its brutal attacks against Israel and the Jews, as if they prepared their next generation for a lifetime battle.