OSLO'S GIFT OF "PEACE" The Destruction of Israel's Security By Christopher Barder Published by the Ariel Center for Policy Research, Shaarei Tikva 44810, Israel - 2001

This book is required reading for anyone who wants to see the Middle East conflict as it is - not as he or she wants it to be. Its only weakness is skirting round the motives prompting Itzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin to sign the Oslo agreements despite the Army's warnings of their probable disastrous consequences. In fact, reality proved worse than the Army warnings forecast.

Barder ignores the pertinent question why the architects of Oslo were not brought to justice, perhaps because, living in England, he lacks the detailed knowledge of Israeli society needed to provide the answer. In a normal country, politicians who hobnob with the enemy and obviously hostile foreigners risk having their motives and actions thoroughly investigated by the police. In Israel, their supporters control the Police Investigations Department and the State Attorney's office, as well as constituting a substantial majority of the Supreme Court and the bulk of the General Security Service (GSS). So politicians who promoted the interests of the PLO - even while it was still an organization it was illegal to contact - were never prosecuted. And they are unlikely to be prosecuted until most of the defeatist elite is dismissed from the key posts listed above. Treason is a crime punishable with death under Israeli law, but for the last 35 years nobody has been charged with treason for aiding the political or strategic goals of Israel's Arab enemies or spying for West European states now forming the European Community.

However, when it comes to dealing with Israel's crucial strategic and political problems, Barder is well informed and incisive, offering a wealth of vital facts for the unprejudiced to digest. He understands that influential circles in the US State Department, CIA and Pentagon have not only prevented the recognition of defensible borders for Israel but have also promoted defeatism there by blatant interventions influencing the outcome of Israeli elections. He even wonders whether these circles intend to weaken Israel enough to assure its eventual destruction by the Arabs. He is well aware of the anti-Semitism in Europe and its effect on policies in the Middle East. Yet he understands that Israel will not survive if it cannot defend itself and that for this borders including the Golan Heights and most of Judea-Samaria are essential. Though his book was written and published before September 11th 2001, Barder implies that the George W. Bush administration in the United States may be more ready to support changes in traditional US policies towards Israel than its predecessors if Israel demands such changes firmly and explains its demands properly.

The main reason why Israel's case is presented so badly abroad is Israel's reluctance to claim Palestine for the Jewish people in accordance with the terms of the League of Nations Mandate to Britain, which do not endorse the international legitimacy of Arab claims to the country. Barder stresses that Article 6 of this Mandate requires Britain to encourage "close settlement by Jews on the land" and that for the West Bank this right has never been terminated. He also states that Article 49 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention forbidding an "occupying power" to "deport or transfer some of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies" does not apply to this territory.[1] Indeed, given the aforementioned terms of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, Israel should not be regarded as an "occupying power" in the West Bank. This distinction belongs to Jordan, whose claim to the area was only recognized by Britain and Pakistan. So Jordan could not transfer its unrecognized claim to the PLO, which as an unrepentant terrorist organization lacking the attributes of a sovereign state cannot be the beneficiary of UN Security Council Resolution No.242.

Barder criticizes Israel's Labor Party and parties further Left for accepting the Arab claim that Israelis are "occupiers", but does not offer a good explanation of their motives for doing so. It can be cogently argued that such explanations are outside the scope of a book about the Oslo agreements. But this particular lack prevents the reader from understanding why the dangers these agreements created are so deadly. For the greatest of these dangers stems not from the hostility of the Arabs or the interests of the powers but from the post-Zionist defeatist mindset of Israel's ruling Jewish elite. This elite dominates the Supreme Court, the legal system, the academia, the mainstream press, television, other electronic media and even the criminal investigations department of the police - regardless of who is Prime Minister or which party leads the Government coalition. It has no respect for democracy, interpreting it to suit itself. And though it has close links with the Left-wing parties, it is very much the senior partner in this partnership. The Right-wing and religious parties pay the price for their fear of removing it by being unable to rule the country when they are nominally "in power."

For 35 years, Israel's own television and radio have systematically tried to discredit Zionism in its original sense - the Jewish right to rule Palestine and settle it with Jews. Instead, they promoted the Arab thesis that Jews are "occupiers" in their own country. This was accompanied by the denigration of politicians urging the retention of some territories beyond the pre-1967 borders (as UN Resolution No.242 permits) regardless of their political affiliation. Golda Meir was a typical victim. Simultaneously, the Criminal Investigations Department of the Police, State Attorneys and their staffs usually refused to prosecute Arabs for illegal building, stealing of Jewish agricultural property, stone throwing, arson and rioting, on the grounds of "lack of public interest." Often no effort was made to arrest the perpetrators. The Arabs, both "Israeli" and "Palestinian," interpreted these authorities' motive as fear. This was a major factor encouraging disloyalty among Israeli Arabs and violence among the Palestinians.

Against this background, the Rabin Government signed the Oslo accords and pushed them through the Knesset with Arab votes against the wishes of the Jewish population of the country and the majority of Jewish MKs. The message to Yasser Arafat was that Israel was divided, Zionism was dead and the Israeli Left would help him bury it. It became unmistakable when Peres forbade the Foreign Ministry to use the PLO Charter demanding the destruction of the Jewish State for explaining Israel's case abroad.

During the term of the Rabin/Peres administration (1992-1996), Arafat laid the foundations for his war with Israel. He brought in arms and increased his "police force" army far beyond what the Oslo agreement permitted, also arming the Tanzim and other militias. He knew that this Israeli Government was more concerned with gaining Arab votes for the 1996 elections than with bothering him about these infractions or the incitement to murder Jews in Palestinian schoolbooks. And he correctly judged that, for as long as he kept terrorism within "reasonable" limits, the only part of the agreement Rabin and Peres would insist on implementing was that relating to Israeli withdrawals.

Oslo created a Palestinian Authority ruled by terrorists and elevated it to the status of a "partner for peace." But the real damage to Israel's prospects of survival was caused by its post-Zionist Jewish elite of which Rabin and Peres were the servants. This elite not only identified with Arafat's aspirations, using the media at its disposal to castigate those who did not as "enemies of peace" but also created doubts about the basic principle of Zionism - the right of Jews to settle in Palestine. On one occasion, the Supreme Court even compelled a Jewish community established on Government land in pre-1967 Israel to accept an Arab who wanted to live there. This is tantamount to ordering the Jewish National Fund to allocate to Arabs land purchased for Jewish settlement. So it should occasion no surprise that in February 2002 Michael Ben Ya'ir, formerly Legal Adviser to the (Rabin) Government, publicly identified himself with 50 Ashkenazi reservists refusing to serve in "occupied territories" at the height of the war with PLO terrorism.

Christopher Barder does an excellent job when he explains with much pertinent detail why Israel should have retained the Lebanese security zone (chapter 1), why it should retain the Golan Heights (chapter 2), why the West Bank is so crucial to Israel's survival (chapter 3) and why Egypt and the Gaza strip constitute a major security problem (chapter 4). He is very effective when unmasking Arab pretences and the unswerving Arab opposition to Israel's existence - not least in Egypt and Syria. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the military effects of the Oslo agreements (accurately forecasting the deterioration of security in Jerusalem) and with their impact on the Israeli Arabs. He provides detailed statistics of terrorist attacks and the casualties they caused.

One of the most important and telling items cited by Barder is the interview with Zuheir Mohsein, a member of the Supreme Council of the PLO, given to the Dutch newspaper Trouw on March 31st 1977, when Mohsein was then Head of the PLO's Military Operations Department (the italics are mine). He said:

"There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity, because it is in the interest of the Arabs to encourage a separate Palestinian identity in contrast to Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new expedient to continue the fight against Zionism and for Arab unity..."

Two and a half years later, the then Secretary-General of the Arab League made the guiding principles of the Arab states' attitude to the existence of Israel and Zionism very clear in an interview with Radio Monte Carlo:

"The Arab leaders, despite the differences in their approaches, are united in their view that the confrontation with Zionism will not end with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in a few years' time. On the contrary, the confrontation will continue - with the marshaling of the military, economic and political resources of the Arab states - in order to defeat Zionism."

This honest statement, since reaffirmed by events, accurately reflects the behavior of the Arab world after Israel came into existence.[2] It also exposes he lie behind the "land for peace" concept propagated by Arab rulers and endorsed by the European Community and ex-President Clinton. "Peace" for the Arabs means getting land and continuing the war.

Proving such unpalatable truths is probably the most important attribute of Barder's book. The problem is that a significant[3] minority of Israeli Jews, including most of the aforementioned Jewish elite, will disregard his evidence because - consciously or subconsciously - they want the Arabs to realize the first two stages of their plan to destroy Israel: (1) the creation of a Judenrein PLO state in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip and (2) the conversion of Israel into a bi-national Arab-Jewish state.

This behavior is not due to a conscious wish to destroy the Jewish state. It is due to an elite's desperate desire to preserve its status and economic privileges while it becomes increasingly unrepresentative of the country's Jewish population.

Israel does not need "friends" like the Norwegian socialists who promoted the Oslo agreements. In 1982, Arafat hosted a group of Norwegians in Tunis. They included Juergen Holst and Thorvald Stoltenberg. Holst was described by Arafat as "one of the sincerest friends of the Palestinian people." Stoltenberg, who was Holst's brother-in-law and shared his views, was Foreign Minister of Norway when the secret Israel-PLO meetings began in January 1993. Holst became Foreign Minister later in 1993 and oversaw these secret talks. Rabin, Peres and Beilin did not object.

Bjørn Tore Godal,, who became another Labor Party Foreign Minister of Norway in 1996, sponsored a resolution in 1971 stating that Israel must cease to exist as a Jewish state and a progressive Palestinian state should be established in its place. The Norwegian UN official Terje Larsen is another enthusiastic advocate of a PLO state.

The European Community, which under French and German guidance had long been pro-PLO, became more so after the signing of the Oslo agreements and has been instrumental in financing the PLO's illegal arms supplies, while doing little to help the Palestinian population economically, as its aid payments are usually diverted to swell the income of PLO functionaries. Besides, it has been acting as a brake on the Bush administration's desire to pursue the war against Moslem terrorism.

Most of those asked to point to the dangers Oslo created will point to the obvious - legitimizing Arab terrorism, endowing it with the military and political prerequisites for waging a successful war of attrition, creating disloyalty among Israeli Arabs, teaching Palestinian children to be suicide bombers, rendering the achievement of defensible borders exceedingly difficult. Barder's information and statistics are indispensable for the understanding of these dangers.

Nevertheless, the main dangers are internal - losing the Zionist ideology without which, as the Arabs well know, Israel cannot survive, losing the belief in the justice of the Zionist cause, and allowing the post-Zionists who created this atmosphere to confuse the public by claiming that surrender to Arab demands is the only possible "solution" offering Israel security.

Barder's book covers a period during which President Clinton dictated US policy. Clinton's attitude to Israel's territorial claims was negative and the defeatism of Rabin and Peres suited him well. He deftly utilized Rabin's assassination to promote Rabin's views in Israel, called Ehud Barak his "new toy" and must have been disappointed when his presidential proposals were torpedoed by Barak's insistence on a "final settlement." Had Arafat "accepted" them, Israel's survival would have been in serious doubt.

Today, America's war on terrorism has created possibilities that the US may accept pro-Israeli revisions in Clinton's territorial concepts, making Barder's book even more pertinent. But to obtain these revisions, Israel needs a Government that will demand them unequivocally and an elite that will not sabotage them by deliberately trying to create an atmosphere of despair, despondency and uncertainty.

1 The 1949 Geneva Convention is an impudent piece of self-serving hypocrisy. Less than four years earlier, the victorious World War II Allies had expelled many millions of Germans from East Germany and the Sudetenland (which were settled by Poles and Czechs respectively) to territories West of the Oder/Neisse river line. The 1949 Geneva Convention made the US, Western Europe and Russia guardians of the new status quo they had created, regardless of circumstances that might warrant others to act as they had done.

2 The only possible exception is Jordan, which after the Six Day War found Israel to be a check on the ambitions of Syria and Iraq to control it. Lebanon, a bi-national state with a large Christian population that is not ethnically Arab, was occupied by Syria in the 1970s and cannot conduct an independent foreign policy.

3 In influence, not in numbers.