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Dr. Aaron Lerner is co-founder of , Independent Media Review and Analysis, an Israel-based news organization which provides an extensive digest of media, polls and significant interviews and events relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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By Dr. Aaron Lerner
July 7, 2006
Critics of Israel frequently point to the asymmetric relationship between Israel and the Palestinians as if it isn't "fair".
But it was not supposed to be symmetric.
Oslo did not have balanced rights between Israel and the PLO.
Oslo set limits on the size, composition, arming and deployment of Palestinian security forces - and no limits on Israeli forces.
Oslo gave Israel the right to veto any Palestinian construction which may harm, damage or adversely affect Jewish settlements and military locations or the infrastructure [including access roads] serving them while putting no such restrictions on Jewish construction..
And there was a reason for that.
Because Oslo was not launched between equal powers. At the time Oslo was launched there was no intifada. In fact, Israel's "wanted list" of terrorists was on a continual decline.
The Israelis who launched Oslo were driven by ideology -- not desperation.
Now you may tell a child that he should defer to his younger sibling because he is smaller, but in the real world, when two bodies deal with each other, asymmetric power leads to asymmetric results that reflect this. That is not to say that it is a zero-sum world, just that the deals that are made reflect the cards the parties are holding.
And so, with Arafat being plucked from the dung heap of history, he agreed that a cornerstone of Oslo would be an extremely asymmetric arrangement.
As he wrote in that first letter to Rabin on September 9, 1993 (and as repeated in the agreements):
"The PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations."
As the recognized leader of the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat forfeited the right take his struggle with Israel beyond the negotiating table.
And while there are those who claim that the Palestinians had a right under international conventions to fight what they termed the Israeli occupation, that commitment by their leader stripped the Palestinians of any legitimate claim to the right to use force and violence.
The argument against Palestinian attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip should not be that Israel retreated completely from it -- as if to possibly imply that it is somehow more acceptable for a Palestinian to murder a Jew at the Western Wall (beyond the Green Line) than to launch a Qassam from Gaza to Sderot.
The argument should be that Palestinians forfeited the right to attack anyone -- including soldiers -- anywhere, be it in Tel Rumeida or Tel Aviv.
Unfortunately, there appears to be no one of any significance on the Palestinian side either willing or able to honor this basic commitment.
When we started the Oslo experiment over a decade ago, the ideologues who plunged us into it assured us that in the event of failure the IDF could always restore the situation.
Yet today, faced with the mess, ideologues such as Defense Minister Amir Peretz are unable to come to grips with the harsh reality that an ongoing Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip is a necessary condition for stability -- and that after the implementation of a Gaza version of the highly successful Operation Defensive Shield that was carried out in the West Bank.
No. That doesn't mean IDF forces carrying out regularly scheduled patrols across the Gaza Strip -- just as Israel doesn't regularly schedule patrols in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah or the other cities in the West Bank. But Israel can and does go anywhere in the West Bank anytime it considers necessary.
And thanks to the success of Defensive Shield and follow-up operations it is able to do so with a minimum of manpower and supporting equipment.
This isn't the option that Peretz and his fellow travelers prefer, but at this stage it's the only realistic option.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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