A Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs’ policy compendium has exposed, explored and assessed how the three-decades-old diplomatic process called the Oslo Accords, particularly Israel’s concessionary approach and policy passivity towards PLO and Palestinian Authority financial incentivization of terror, corruption and international defamation of Israel’s legal and diplomatic rights, have enabled the PLO/P.A. to assault Israel and defame its international standing.
Simultaneously, the PLO’s cooption of Israel’s legitimacy has enhanced its international profile and standing as a U.N. non-member observer state. Our research and policy initiative recommends a more effective pathway for Israel to correct past policy errors and hold the P.A. accountable in order to achieve a more secure and viable approach to Israel-P.A. relations.
The 30 years of the Oslo Accords have resulted in unintended consequences.
The internationally witnessed and guaranteed Accords, first signed at the White House in 1993 under the Clinton administration, were designed to end PLO terrorism, terror incentivization, hate indoctrination, antisemitism, radicalism and political warfare. Ironically, the Accords have resulted in precisely the opposite outcome.
The PLO and its internationally recognized subsidiary, the P.A., have only intensified their global assault against Israel. The P.A.’s “pay-for-slay” cash incentive system has fueled terror against Israeli civilians, killing and wounding thousands. Nazi, Soviet, and Islamist antisemitic conspiracy motifs have flooded Western social networks.
Massive P.A. corruption has paralyzed the Palestinian economy and thrust the Palestinian public into the arms of the Iran-backed terror group Hamas. Oslo’s mandated “free and fair” Palestinian elections have entrenched Fatah domination of the P.A., with P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas in the 19th year of his first four-year P.A.-law-prescribed term.
Perhaps most far-reaching, the Oslo process has resulted in an inversion of legitimacy whereby international sympathies and support have accrued to the PLO/P.A. while Israel’s legitimacy has been denounced and defamed while Israel itself is denied equal treatment at the U.N. and other international organizations.
Originally published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
