Tuesday, August 06, 2002

At last! Ehud Ya'ari - The whole picture.
I've been looking for this - Ehud Ya'ari, top Israeli expert on Arab affairs, shares his views on the current hostilities and the Oslo accord.

And I found it all by myself!

"The chaotic situation today [in the West Bank and Gaza] was consciously, deliberately, and intentionally introduced by Chairman Arafat, though it has extended beyond the time frame he originally conceived. I describe his actions as a willing suspension of control, first exercised on the night of September 28, 2000, when he issued the orders and instructions to his political leadership and the different commanders of the security agencies to embark upon this endeavour. The order for the formal security forces was to stick to the sidelines and allow the irregulars – what later came to be known as the national and Islamic forces, an alliance of Tanzim, Hamas, Jihad, and the Fronts – to do the job.

[...] The main fault in the Oslo Agreement was not the concept of seeing Israel’s strategic interest, as I do, in the creation of a Palestinian state. The main fault of Oslo was in assuming it was indispensable, as they thought at the time, to start the process by bringing in seven brigades of the Fatah and the PA Liberation Army and having Arafat on the scene right from the start.

[...] Arafat does not see Hamas as a rival or as an adversary. He never did. For Arafat, Hamas is a partner, which he keeps as a junior partner. Arafat’s legacy is the combined structure that he allowed to emerge during the intifada, an informal alliance, and now formal, among his own Fatah faction, Hamas, and the rest.

[...] The Palestinian "right of return" is the central issue. A mini-state is not the central issue and it never was. You will not find a Palestinian leadership that will be willing to accept any of the formulas currently being discussed as a solution to this problem. The Palestinian national movement is about the right of return; it is not about the West Bank and Gaza.

[...] This war is only about one issue. It is not about settlements. It was never about occupation. It is about whether the Palestinian state is going to be born in peace and for peace, or whether it will be some sort of runaway state that is allowed to come into being without resolving the conflict with Israel, in order to maintain a state of fluctuating hostility."