For the Intellectuals only: How the #Oslo accords are being wrecked and how the current #Gaza is a game changer for the entire Middle East. The Oslo Accords are a set of agreements between the government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the Oslo I Accord, signed in Oslo in 1993 and the Oslo II Accord, signed in Taba in 1995 The Oslo Accords marked the start of the Oslo process, a peace process that is aimed at achieving a peace-treaty based on the United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and 338, and to fulfill the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. The Oslo process started after secret negotiations in Oslo, resulting in the recognition by the PLO of the State of Israel and the recognition by Israel of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and as a partner in negotiations. The Oslo Accords created the Palestinian Authority, whose functions are the limited self-governance over parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territories; and, it acknowledged that the PLO is now Israels partner in permanent status negotiations about the remaining issues. The most important issues are the borders of Israel and Palestine, the Israeli settlements, the status of Jerusalem, the question of Israels military presence in and control over Palestine after the recognition of the Palestinian state by Israel, and the Palestinian right of return. The Oslo Accords, however, fell short of the promise of a Palestinian state. Hamas’s motive for wanting a little war are more obvious and urgent: it has lost almost all its sources of funding. Iran stopped funding its budget to the tune of $20 million per month when Hamas sided with the Sunni rebels in the Syrian civil war. Egypt stopped helping it after last year’s military coup against Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government, and closed the tunnels under the border through which the Gaza Strip received most of its imported goods. Those imports were Hamas’s main source of tax revenue. Hamas is broke, and if it stays broke its control over the Strip will weaken. Whereas a war with Israel will rally the local Palestinians to its support, and if enough of them are killed, Egypt and the Gulf states may feel compelled to give Hamas financial aid. So the only real question is how many dead Palestinians will satisfy both Netanyahu’s need to look tough and Hamas’s need to rebuild popular support at home and get financial help from abroad. On past performance, the magic number is between a hundred and a thousand dead: around 1,200 Palestinians were killed in the 2008-9 war and 174 in 2012. Todays death toll reached almost 600. After that—assuming that only a handful of Israelis have been killed, which is guaranteed by the fact that Israeli air and missile strikes are a hundred times more efficient at killing than Hamas’s pathetic rockets—a ceasefire becomes possible. We have already crossed the lower threshold of that range of Palestinian deaths in the current mini war, so a ceasefire is theoretically possible now, but both sides will probably press on for at least another few days. Then the ceasefire will be agreed, and both sides will start thinking about the next round, only a few years from now. But the dead will stay dead. Excerpts from Gwynne Dyer 2014. Wikipedia 2013
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 21:42:50 +0000