Israeli Left should take responsibility for Oslo War
Ari Shavit
"Ha'aretz," 22 February 2001 

The security situation that Ehud Barak's peace government has 
bequeathed to Ariel Sharon's peace government can be more or 
less summed up in the following manner:
Hezbollah attacks on Har Dov (to which Israel refrains from 
responding), Tanzim attacks on Har Gilo (to which Israel is
incapable of responding), a suicide attack at the Azur junction 
(to which Israel does not know how to respond), shots fired at 
Israeli vehicles on the Modi'in Highway, shots fired at Israeli 
vehicles on the Tunnel Road, and approximately sixty Israelis 
and more than 300 Palestinians killed within less than five 
months.This kind of security situation can only be described 
as close to catastrophic. It would be unthinkable to imagine
such a security situation existing in any other self-respecting 
democracy. 

This state of affairs, which has not been experienced in this 
country since the mid-1950s, can be directly attributed to the 
melt-down of two concepts:
The Grand Concept of Oslo and the Mini-Concept of the Withdrawal 
from Lebanon.
In line with the Grand Concept of Oslo, it was assumed that 
the flooding of the land with fifty thousand AK-47 Kalashnikov 
assault rifles for the Palestinians would usher in an era of 
peace for the Middle East. In line with the Mini-Concept of the 
Withdrawal from Lebanon, it was assumed that the deployment of 
Hezbollah rocket-launchers along the line on which Kibbutz
Menara is situated would usher in an era of peace for Israel's 
northern frontier.

Both conceptions are the brain-child of the same genius. 
The records of the Registrar of Patents documents in detail 
the fact that the Israeli who invented the alchemist's formula 
of Oslo ("If we say that this is peace and if we sing out loud 
that this is peace and if we keep on saying the 'Abracadabra' 
of peace then, perhaps, all this will truly lead to peace") is 
the very same Israeli who thought up the lame-brain idea of the
Israel Defense Forces pulling out of Lebanon at any price 
("If they defeat us, chase us out and humiliate us, immediately 
afterwards they will certainly leave us alone in peace"). 

However, this famed inventor cannot be held solely responsible 
for these two concepts. Granted, the outgoing justice minister 
did turn Israel into a country that is incapable of granting 
even a modicum of personal safety to its own citizens, and has 
gambled twice on Israel's fate and has twice lost. Granted, 
he still refuses to acknowledge that all his efforts have had
disastrous consequences and that his mistakes have been paid 
for in blood and have produced hundreds of graves. 
But responsibility must also be shared by thousands of other 
Israelis - intelligent individuals occupying key positions in 
Israeli society - who were his partners in the scandal of these 
two concepts. Thousands of Israelis who are the champions of and
determined crusaders for peace, are unable to muster the courage 
to stand up and publicly declare that they have led Israel into 
this situation, that they have brought Israel to the very brink 
of an abyss.

When prime minister Golda Meir, defense minister Moshe Dayan 
and the members of the elite group who surrounded them led 
Israel into the fire of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, they were 
called to account. When prime minister Menachem Begin, defense 
minister Ariel Sharon and the members of the elite group who 
surrounded them led Israel into another fire, the War in 
Lebanon in 1982, they were called to account. When prime 
minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert 
unnecessarily placed Israel on a bed of nails in 1996 over 
the Western Wall Tunnel, many Israelis demanded that they be 
called to account. However, today, when it is crystal-clear 
that the Oslo-Lebanon elite has led Israel into a true 
conflagration, has led Israel to face a wall of fire that 
has already scorched acres and acres of land, no one is 
calling the members of that elite to account. One Israeli
after another has been killed and yet no one is demanding 
that this elite group be called to account. One Palestinian 
after another has been killed and yet no one is demanding 
that this elite group be called to account. Granted, the
government has fallen, but none of its leading lights has 
been toppled. None of them is seen to have made any error, 
none of them has blundered, none of them bears any 
responsibility for the present situation.

The refusal by an entire stratum of leadership to assume 
responsibility for its actions is an ugly and extremely 
grave phenomenon. Nonetheless, what is needed now is not 
the collective deposing of all the members of the Oslo
group. Nor should the elite that was responsible for the 
serious blunder of the two concepts, and which ruled this 
country with such arrogance for the past seven years, 
be thrown out into the cold. The political culture of public 
commissions of inquiry and public beheadings has run out of
steam.

The political culture of mutual mud-slinging and mutual 
exclusion has demonstrated its limits. Thus, a different 
kind of punishment must be meted out to those responsible 
for the serious blunder of the two concepts. A reverse 
form of punishment is what is called for. They must acknowledge
that they have made a tragic mistake and they must be forced 
to remain where they are, to face the music, to assume 
responsibility. They must be full-fledged partners in a 
national rescue project aimed at pulling Israel out of the
two minefields into which they have led it.

All this means that today, when Sharon is extending his hand 
in peace on the domestic front, the Israeli left does not 
have the moral option of staying on the sidelines. If Sharon's 
invitation is rejected and if, as a result, he finds himself 
plunged into a war with the Palestinians, this armed 
confrontation cannot be called Sharon's War. It will, instead, 
be the Oslo War - the war that was built into the absurd 
framework that the Oslo elite set up here. Similarly, if Sharon 
becomes entangled in a war on Israel's northern frontier, this 
armed confrontation cannot be called Sharon's War.
It will be the Four Mothers' War - the war that was built into 
the humiliating process in which four Israeli mothers forced 
the country to flee from Lebanon. Thus, if war breaks out in 
the North, no leftist will be entitled to stand in Tel Aviv's 
Yitzhak Rabin Square and protest. If war breaks out in the 
North, no leftist will be entitled to sit and count the dead 
beside the Official Residence of the prime minister in Jerusalem.
Because, this time around, those dead soldiers will belong to us. 
They will belong to the Israeli left.