Lebanon, Oslo and the appropriate conclusions
www.israelnationalnews.com
August 23, 2004
by Reuven Eliaz
Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations now taking place between the Likud and the Labor party concerning the establishment of a national unity government, one scenario is certain: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, unlike many of his predecessors, will not simultaneously serve as defense minister.
That is because in 1983 a government commission of inquiry, headed by then-Supreme Court president Yitzhak Kahan, found that Sharon, who was serving as defense minister, was indirectly responsible for the deaths of between 700 and 800 Palestinian civilians murdered by Lebanese Christian militiamen at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut during Operation Peace for Galilee. The Kahan commission, which was established as a result of public pressure following a mass rally in Tel Aviv organized by Peace Now and the Labor party, determined that "responsibility is to be imputed" to Sharon "for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed." He was urged to "draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office." Sharon was subsequently removed as defense minister and has never held that position again to this day.
As tragic as they were, however, the numbers of Palestinians killed at Sabra and Shatilla have been dwarfed by the more than 1,200 Israelis who have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists since the signing of the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993. Shimon Peres, who then served as foreign minister, promised a "New Middle East" in the wake of Israel's agreement to recognize the PLO and negotiate with Yasser Arafat, who had been discredited internationally for having supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait.
Peres's "New Middle East," however, never materialized. During the almost eleven years that have elapsed since Oslo, and certainly in the almost four years that have elapsed since Arafat began his war of terror against Israeli civilians, a clear majority of Israelis have come to the conclusion that Arafat was and remains an unreconstructed terrorist who cannot be a partner to any negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The latest Israeli, apparently, to come to that conclusion is Shimon Peres himself. Peres has now been quoted by Ma'ariv as having told Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, that Arafat, with whom he and the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, "is crazy" and that "someone has to pound some sense into his head." In a later meeting with the visiting president of Georgia, Peres was reported to have said that Arafat "didn't know how to transform himself from guerilla leader to the leader of a state-to-be." [My translations from the Hebrew.]
To be fair, it should be noted that Peres tried to backtrack from these quotes in the days after they first appeared in print. His spokesman initially claimed that Peres had meant to say that Arafat "had gone mad." When that didn't quite clarify his position, Peres stated openly that he didn't call Arafat "crazy" because he doesn't employ "that type of language." Just a few weeks earlier, Peres had called the current government's economic policies "shitty" and "piggish," but the inconsistency is beside the point. By now, most Israelis, in contradistinction to Shimon Peres, see no reason to be coy in calling Arafat what he really is.
In any event, Peres, the architect of Oslo, has now admitted in as many words that his New Middle East was based on a fatal flaw – Arafat is incapable of negotiation with Israel and unfit to play the role of peace partner. Peres thus joins a growing list of international opinion makers – from the UN's Terje Roed-Larsen to King Abdullah of Jordan to the editors of The New York Times – who have come to the conclusion that Arafat is part of the problem, not the solution.
That being the case, the time has arrived for a government commission of inquiry to be appointed to determine to whom responsibility is to be imputed for having disregarded the danger of acts of vengeance and bloodshed that Oslo made possible. Certainly, the Labor party, which took the moral high ground in demanding a commission of inquiry to investigate Sabra and Shatilla, has no reason to object. The chairman of the Labor party during Operation Peace for Galilee was Shimon Peres, who holds that same position today. In the meanwhile, Peres should voluntarily remove himself as a candidate for foreign minister in any national unity government that may be formed in the coming weeks. If someone had to draw the appropriate personal conclusions for the dead of Sabra and Shatilla, then someone should also draw the appropriate personal conclusions for the many more dead of Oslo.
