I Hate To Say It, But I Have To... "I Told You So!"

"Was the much hoped-for Oslo Peace Process between Israel and the Palestinians nothing more than a Trojan Horse?"

What a pompous and arrogant declaration for me to make! However, a full eight years after the signing of the Oslo Accords on the lawn of the White House on September 13, 1993, it can be clearly demonstrated that this Oslo experiment is an utter failure. This process which promised a "New Middle East," has brought Israel to the brink of a major Middle East war, this time with a fully-armed "Fifth Column" ready to destroy a sad and hopeless Israeli population from within.

Amnon Danker, a member of the peace camp, in his commentary called "The Big Scam," published in Israel's Ma'ariv newspaper on August 13, 2001, noted, "Peres, together with his partner, the late Yitzhak Rabin, signed the Oslo Agreements with Yasser Arafat in what was then termed 'the peace of the brave,' and brought us to this point, meaning, to a point in which there are more talks and predictions of a disastrous military confrontation...than optimists had forecast. Today, it is incumbent upon honest people to think about the question of whether we fell into the trap of one of the biggest scams in history."

If both the Israelis and Palestinians were genuine partners desirous of a real negotiated peace, then the Oslo concept was right and could have worked. However, history has now shown that Israel was the only side of the partnership that was interested in genuine peace and made huge concessions to demonstrate this. However, the Palestinians never truly wanted peace and have used the process to bring a "Trojan Horse" of 50,000+ armed Tanzim (PLO militiamen, many of whom came with Arafat from Tunisia) into the heartland of Israel. Their ultimate aim: the destruction of the State of Israel as we know it.

(This may sound extreme, but you only need to read the most recent quotes from the Palestinian leadership contained elsewhere in this issue of the DFJ. Compare these with the declared intentions of the Palestinians and the Moslem world back in September, 1993, reviewed in the Peace Watch feature, "They DID Mean What They Said.")

Interestingly, Israel's leadership during the early years of the Oslo Peace Process was so convinced that Israel had achieved "peace in our time," they became a willing partner of moving Arafat's Tanzim forces into Israel. They even armed them with weapons, which they thought would be used to enforce peace and quash Islamic fanatics bent on destroying Israel. The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin assured the Israeli public that if the Palestinian forces used these weapons to attack Jews, then Israel would take the weapons back! Like that is a real possibility!

In December 1940, after Hitler had invaded Poland and gone on to conquer other lands in Europe, Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, lay on his deathbed at the height of the German bombing blitz and exclaimed, "Everything would have been all right if Hitler hadn't lied to me." When he had cut a deal with Hitler over the mountain defenses of Czechoslovakia who promised "land for peace," he accused any opponent of this plan, including Winston Churchill, as being an enemy of peace. History proved him to be wrong because his "peace partner" was not trustworthy. Has the same thing happened to Israel and the late Yitzhak Rabin?

Eight years after the start of this hopeful prospect for peace, we find Israel in a far worse situation than in any time since the 1948 War of Independence.

In July 2000, then Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak met with Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton at Camp David II and made a generous offer in order to "cut to the chase" on Final Status Talks. In other words, Israel was willing to give more than they had ever offered before in exchange for Palestinian recognition of Israel, and bury the hatchet so that peace would reign and both sides could work on building a future.

Arafat rejected the deal and said he wanted more. During August, Arafat visited major world leaders asking them to put more pressure on Israel to give even more. They simply told Arafat that Israel had made a generous offer and to go back and negotiate directly.

At the end of September, Ariel Sharon, with permission of both Israeli and Palestinian security heads, paid a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in the season of the Jewish holidays.

Riots broke out and became a second "intifada" (Uprising), that Arafat quickly called the Al Aksa Intifada. Arafat called on the Arab Moslem world to invade Israel to protect "the holy Al Aksa Mosque" which he claimed was under threat of being taken over by the Jews. (At no time was this ever a risk.)

The conflict immediately escalated to a full-fledged armed conflict in the heartland of Israel, with heavy weapons being used by both sides.

Jewish religious sites were a main target of the Palestinians. Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus) was taken over by the Moslems early in the conflict, with Jews being attacked and killed, and the Jewish place of prayer being converted into a green-domed Mosque within 24 hours. Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of Mechpelah in Hebron continue under attack with the intention of a full Moslem takeover.

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the site of both Solomon and Herod's Temples, and now the home of the Al Aksa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is now being cleared of its Jewish/Temple artifacts by the Moslems. They are scraping the surface of the Temple Mount platform down to the bedrock and discarding the rubble, while slicing the large pieces into smaller chuncks with a huge stone-cutting machine. This will efffectively give credence to the Moslem claim that there has never been any Jewish/Christian biblical connection to this site. Go to www.pna.org under "Historical Sites" and see how they describe the Western Wall and the Temple Mount as never having any connection to the Jewish people.

The Palestinian Authority has wantonly used their children as a media shield while their fighters shot at Israeli soldiers from ambulances or the safety of nearby buildings. Many children have died or been injured as a result, all for the sake of creating a media image that Israelis soldiers are shooting at children. A similar situation has occurred in Christian Beit Jala (adjacent to Bethlehem), as the Tanzim have used Christian homes to shoot at Jewish Gilo so that Israeli return fire appears to be directed at Christians. Both of these actions are calculated by the Moslem PA leadership and puts children and Christians at risk.

Suicide bombers from Palestinian Islamic groups have found their way to malls, restaurants, discos, open produce markets and just about anywhere a crowd of Jews will congregate. The shooting of high-caliber weapons, including mortars, into Jewish neighborhoods is an almost daily occurrence. Car bombs are a more frequent occurrence than in the past. Before Oslo,

Why did Yasser Arafat reject Barak's generous offer in July 2000? Why won't Arafat negotiate a peace settlement no matter what Israel offers?

The answer has to do with the Phased Program, offered by Yasser Arafat to the Arab League in 1974. With numerous failed attempts to destroy Israel from the outside, Arafat suggested a Phased Program to achieve this end. This plan called for the PLO to take any means to acquire any part of "Palestine" that Israel was willing to give up, and then use it as a launching pad for the acquisition of the rest of Israel. This would involve getting territory west of the Jordan River, move in Arafat's militia and arm them, and then launch an attack on Israel. The PLO would then call on the Moslem states to join the fray in an attempt to achieve their overall goal of establishing a Palestinian State on ALL of the land west of the Jordan River, not just the West Bank and Gaza. The latter was never their goal.

In 1996, Yasser Arafat attempted this final conflict when Israel opened the Western Wall tunnel (OK'd with the Moslem authorities due to an exchange with the Moslems for letting them open a new mosque under the southeast corner of the Temple Mount platform in Solomon's stables). Seventy people were killed while Arafat called on the Moslem world to come and help him "save the Al Aksa Mosque," but the attempt was premature and it failed. (The Al Aksa Mosque is considered the third most holy site in Islam and certainly is the focus for calling upon Moslems of the world to come in a Holy War (jihad) if it were under threat from the outside.)

Arafat's second attempt is the current "Al Aksa Intifada," a name Arafat chose on purpose to again try and attract outside Moslem armies in a Holy War against Israel. Arafat refuses to stop the uprising, encourages it to intensify, while raising a continued, last-ditch call to the Moslem nations to fight for Palestine.

Faisal Husseini, who died of a heart attack in Kuwait on May 31, 2001 (which Arafat blamed on Israel), said the following in his last interview with journalist Shakfik Ahmed Ali in the Egyptian newspaper, el Arav: "The Oslo agreements were a Trojan Horse," and, "The strategic goal is to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea."

In the wake of the interviewer's provocative opening question, Husseini revealed that he well understood the PLO's and Arafat's intentions in those far-off days of '93. "I said three things then," he noted. "First, after a long period of pregnancy, we brought into the world a child that was smaller, weaker and uglier than what we had hoped for. But despite everything, it was still our child, to foster, develop and strengthen until it could stand on its own two feet...Second, we are the Jews of the 21st century. They snuck into our country in a variety of ways...and we only have to act now as they did in their day: To return to our country, to settle, to strike new roots, whatever will be in the country from which we were driven out."

Then, after Husseini detailed the main stages of the story of the ancient Greeks' failed siege of Troy, he arrived at the clumsy Trojan Horse that the Greeks left behind as the spoils of war during their feigned retreat. The people of Troy, as the story is told, opened their gates and brought the Trojan horse inside - "and we all know what happened afterwards."

"Had the US and Israel understood before Oslo," concluded Husseini, "that all that remained of the Palestine liberation movement and the Pan-Arab movement was the Trojan Horse named Arafat or PLO, they would have never opened their fortified gates and let him in."

Husseini continued to reveal what he told his confidants in the days of Oslo: "Get on the horse and don't ask what it is made of. Get on the horse, and your entry inside will turn into the dawn of an era of building and not an era of the end of hope!" He did not forget to add that three years after the triumphant return to Gaza, he said it is finally time to emerge from the horse and "get to work," without wasting time and energy on the argument over whether or not the horse is good: "Thanks to him we were able to enter the city!"

Further on in the interview, he even added and clarified that it is the obligation of all the Palestinian forces and factions to see the Oslo Accords as, "temporary" steps or, "gradual" goals, because in this way, "We are setting an ambush for the Israelis and cheating them." He also differentiated between, "strategic," long term, "higher" goals, and "political," short term goals dependent on "the current international establishment, balance of power, capabilities, and variable considerations that change from time to time." Nevertheless, the Palestinians have been forced to temporarily concentrate on "gradual diplomatic goals." However, the main goal is the "liberation of all Palestine from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean)," even if this requires a struggle that will continue "1,000 years, or generations upon generations."

Amnon Danker in his Ma'ariv commentary concludes with a sobering observation about the current state of the Peace Process in assessing whether it was a success or a failure.

"The question that everyone must ask themselves today is: If you could return back in a time machine to 1993, would you support the Oslo agreement knowing what you know today? Only a reminder: In 1993, the [first] Intifada was wearing down almost to a point of a halt, Arafat was an international outcast, boycotted in the Arab world, and his power and influence hit an all time low due to his support of Saddam Hussein, and he was in Tunis, subject to be transferred, with his headquarters, to Yemen. No one had yet heard of suicide bombings, and there were no regular armed Palestinian forces at a walking distance from Israeli towns and military bases. This was the situation [as of 1993].

"Now you tell me: Was it worth it? And if your answer is that the alternative could have been worse, think whether the reality today is not worse then any imaginable scenario."

The 1993 Oslo agreement, that has born such disastrous fruit, was the product of Liberal thinking in the Clinton administration. Clinton is responsible for the Israel situation.

Believing the Liberal's lies has lead to disaster. Yet we still believe them today when they lie, and the future will be terrible because we do.

This is certainly eye-opening. If Arafat et al are so blatant in their stated objectives (annihilation of Israel), why do the media pundits and world leaders alike insist that Arafat wants peace but it's the mean old Israelis who are the obstacle? I wouldn't (and don't) believe a word that comes from Arafat's mouth, and the same holds true toward any PA spokesperson. Trojan Horse is a good analogy for what the Arabs have perpetrated there. So why is the "civilized world" (cough cough) still demanding that the Israelis sit on their hands and keep taking whatever the Arabs dish out?? Whenever they retaliate, it is manipulatively called "aggression." I'm also surprised at the Pope's comments, demanding Israel pull out of "occupied areas" and leave the poor mistreated Pallies alone. Is there a self-imposed blindness here, or does everybody see the truth and deliberately choose evil lying Arafat over Israel?

Most of them are simply deluding themselves. They refuse to look at the situation closely because they are afraid of what they will find: A billion Muslims with Hitlerian ambitions for a few million Jews.

The real horror of the situation is just too far outside their worldview for them to ever even see it, much less accept it.

You point out that a Republican administration is keeping Oslo alive. This is true. The American Left dominates the Republican Party very nearly as completely as it dominates the Democratic Party. The political choice offered by the major parties is specious, a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Isreal is not faultless. The dream of peace seduced what appears to be a majority. Israel also takes big bucks from US politicians, certainly the road to hell.

No it didn't.

Even though Israel negotiated terms with the Arab Nations in (50? 52? ) the Arab Nations never let up trying to kill Israelis.
Check back and see. The attacks on Israeli kibuts continued.
Both rocket attacks, and forays by Arab terrorist groups, continued right into the 60s.

These groups are where Yasir Arafat got his start.

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