Gideon Levy : Opinion The Real Oslo Criminals
We
should adopt the conceit of the right: the Oslo criminals. The
pejorative should be attached, of course, to Benjamin Netanyahu and the
savage incitement that he and the settlers perpetrate; but the heroes of
the peace, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, are also worthy of the title. Their missed opportunity, rooted chiefly in their cowardice, is unforgivable.
A new documentary
shows this quite well. “The Oslo Diaries,” directed by Mor Loushy and
Daniel Sivan, which was screened at the Jerusalem Film Festival, is a
moving and important film that many Israelis will see.
When it was over, a woman sitting in
front of me got up and tried in vain to hold back her tears. It was the
chairwoman of Meretz, MK Tamar Zandberg. It was touching to see a
politician crying over a missed opportunity, but a similar discomfort,
to heavy to bear, filled the entire hall. The film proves how, despite
all the wariness toward the Oslo Accords,
they still represented an opportunity — and this is what Rabin and
Peres missed. This missed opportunity was not only fateful, it was also
irreparable.
“The Oslo Diaries”
reflects the spirit of the times. Netanyahu, still with his unkempt
hair, looks like a crazy man at the right-wing rallies, his eyes
spinning round, different from his relatively level-headed image of
today, and the fascist and violent atmosphere of the street as never
seen before in Israel. But the film deals with the peacemakers, and the
picture that arises from them too is worrying. They are the explanation
for the failure, most of which can be placed on their shoulders.
Faltering
from the beginning: Yair Hirschfeld preaches morality with
characteristic haughtiness and threatens Ahmed Qureia for daring to
mention the Nazi occupation of Norway and to compare it to the Israeli
occupation, which has lasted 10 times longer and exacted many more
victims. A few of the other members of the Israeli delegation are
tainted by the same arrogance toward the Palestinians — particularly
legal adviser Joel Singer, who is exposed in the film as an especially
repulsive and arrogant individual.
Standing
out from them is the innocent and benevolent figure of Ron Pundak, and
above all of them shines Yossi Beilin, one of a rare breed of diplomats
who can set his ego aside, always behind the scenes and focused on the
goal rather than on getting credit. Beilin has never received his due
honor: Oslo is Beilin, Beilin is Oslo. The missed opportunity belongs to
those above him, Rabin and Peres. They are the heroes of Oslo, and its
criminals.
They began the
negotiations with the intention of manipulating the Palestinians as far
as possible. There is not a moment of equality or fairness in the
negotiations. When agreement is reached on an Israeli withdrawal from
the West Bank in the second stage, they insisted on only 2 percent. Only
they had “misgivings” about sitting with the PLO. They, who never shed a
drop of blood, found it so difficult to speak with the bloodthirsty
terrorists from Tunis. They, who did not exile hundreds of thousands in
1948 and did not establish the occupation enterprise in 1967, suffered
so much from speaking with terrorists.
>> Setting the record straight on Yitzhak Rabin | Opinion >
The theatrical
feeling of disgust they showed, and Rabin in particular, from shaking
hands with Yasser Arafat demonstrated their true attitude toward the
Palestinians. Rabin of the expulsion of Ramle and the massacre in Lod,
Rabin of “break their bones,” recoiled so much from defiling his pure
hands with Arafat’s bloody hands. And he took the trouble to show it,
too. This is not how you make peace. If anyone should have recoiled it
was Arafat, who was forced to shake the hand of someone who occupied and
disinherited him. Arafat wanted to start a new chapter more than Rabin
did.
But
the main guilt is in the missed opportunity. There were at least two,
one for Rabin and one for Peres. Rabin, who gave Beilin the impression
that he was about to remove the Jewish community of Hebron after the
Baruch Goldstein massacre, became frightened and did not keep his word,
and in doing so determined the future of the relations, possibly
forever.
At the end of the 40
days of mourning, the suicide bombing attacks began. It is not difficult
to imagine what would have happened had Rabin removed the obstacle of
the settlement in Hebron. Peres, who in the movie is seen giving one of
his peace speeches, one of the most courageous and hair-raising ever
heard here, rejected as prime minister the draft of the permanent
agreement reached by Beilin and Mahmoud Abbas, out of fear of the coming
elections. This was the second moment of missed opportunity. Everyone
knows what happened next, and it makes one despair.
Commenti
Posta un commento