From Oslo To Geneva

Regardless of whether they support the November 24 “interim” (6 month) agreement with Iran or not, many commentators have characterized the agreement as “unprecedented,” and many have even criticized Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for having compared it to Berlin 1939.

The comparison to Berlin is not off the wall.

Yet there is a precedent even more recent than 1939. It’s called Oslo.

The interim agreement with Iran calls for a relaxation of economic sanctions – which took about a decade to put in place. Advocates of the agreement argue that, if, after six months, there is insufficient progress in getting the Iranians to abandon their nuclear weapons program, full sanctions “can always” be put back in place.

That sounds familiar.

In September 1993, the Oslo Accords were announced. The Oslo process envisioned (in stages) Israeli withdrawal from substantially all of the west bank.

Advocates of Oslo declared in 1993 that, if the Palestinian Arabs fail to live up to their commitments to peace, “Israel can always go take back” those territories from which it would withdraw under Oslo.

Not so simple. With each terrorist attack, the Oslo advocates argued for patience and restraint instead of military action. In other words, to the Oslo advocates, the “always” in “Israel can always take back” meant “not yet.”

In 2002, after almost a decade of terrorist attacks, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, which “took back” portions of the west bank, but not with a return to the status quo ante. The international community was not agreeable to that. Rather, Israel concentrated on weeding-out terrorists and kept Yasir Arafat under house arrest. When he died two years later, it was possible to achieve a type of détente with the new leadership of the PA.

That relationship, which has lasted for about a decade, is far from the “Israel can always take it back” scenario that the Oslo advocates used to sell the accords to the Israeli center — not to mention the cost in hundreds of dead Israelis from terrorist attacks.

In other words, when pushed by reality, the advocates of the “Israel can always take it back” argument sang a different tune from the one that they sang pre-withdrawal.

When the six-month period under the interim agreement expires, we can expect much of the same from the “you can always go back” camp.

It is likely that, in May 2014, the advocates of the interim agreement will argue that “more time” is needed for negotiating (even though Iran will have been using that time to advance its nuclear weapons program), and the economic facts on ground will have changed.

On the issue of “facts on the ground,” the Oslo mindset is again instructive: In the years before the spring of 2002, terrorists in the west bank had acquired military capabilities that far outpaced those of the Jordanian forces that were defeated in 1967, making Operation Defensive Shield much more complex than taking the west bank in 1967. Similarly, the Iranians have had years to learn the weak points in the sanctions regime, which will make it much more difficult to “re-impose” sanctions in mid-2014.

But there is another parallel between the interim agreement and Oslo It was not just the withdrawal of the Israeli military from the west bank that characterized the Oslo process.

Although every Israeli government since 1967 has recognized that settlements are negotiable, the Oslo era was the first time that any Israeli government acquiesced in the mantra that Israeli settlements are an “obstacle” to peace.

The exact opposite was the case (and has been since 1967) — settlements are what brought Palestinian Arabs to the Madrid Conference of 1991.

By 1991, government-sponsored Jewish settlement in the west bank had a 24-year history. In 1991, a Likud government was in power.

Before Madrid there was significant internal debate in the Arab world as to whether to attend that conference (initiated by the administration of George Bush Sr.).

In 1991, the Palestinian Arabs believed – and for the first time publicly articulated – that, if they do not take advantage of the possibility of an international conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Jewish settlement activity will continue to grow, and it will be “too late” to do anything about it. (For all of his animosity toward Israel, US Secretary of State James Baker gets credit for having driven that point home among the Arabs.)

In other words, had there not been Jewish settlement throughout the west bank during years 1967-1991, there would have been no incentive for the Arabs to attend the Madrid Conference, and Madrid could not have led to Oslo (for its many flaws).

The Likud government that was in power in 1991 understood that, rather than being “obstacles” to peace, settlements actually were building blocks for peace – nonmilitary building blocks. The Labor government that took over a year later — and which signed Oslo — did not understand that.

Like the Labor government of 1992/93, which failed to appreciate that settlements were not an obstacle to peace but rather a nonmilitary tool to affect change, the Obama administration failed to appreciate its non-military tool – namely, economic sanctions.

The tragedy is that, when governments have a non-military tool yet fail to appreciate its usefulness, they increase the chances that there will be a need to resort to a military option.