Caroline Glick, a senior contributing editor of JNS, tells Israel National News that Oslo is far from thirty years in the past, but rather an overarching facet of Israeli life today.
"Oslo is the DNA of Israel's strategic thinking," she says. "It's behind everything from the Palestinians to the place of Judaism in our public life to Iran. The assumptions and paradigms continue to dictate our lives, because - despite over one thousand murder victims, they've never been revisited. They failed, but they continue to dictate our lives."
"Oslo was predicated on two basic assumptions. The first was that the conflict with the Palestinians was because Israel controlled Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, and at the time Gaza. That meant that the larger conflict was because of Israeli actions. The second was that the PLO had turned its back on terrorism, that Arafat could become our subcontractor against terrorism. These continue to guide our policy today."
Glick also rejects the idea that there is no alternative to Oslo. "The current situation is not an alternative. One of the first rules in economics is, 'If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.' Oslo was based on deceit - Arafat lied to Rabin, he hadn't accepted Israel or rejected terrorism. It was also a lie to blame Israel for the pan-Arab conflict - at the Camp David Accords, they received everything they wanted, and still blew up the table and initiated a terrorist campaign against Israel."
"We need to get out of the hole, and the way out of this hole is to reject these assumptions of Oslo, to say, 'We are not responsible for the pathologies of those around us - they are.' It's their fault they don't accept Israel or the Jewish people.
"We have to be willing to accept the truth and restore our belief in the justice of our side, and, of course, understand that the PLO remains a terrorist organization. Then, we will already be in a different place, because we will be basing our policies in reality."