Jodi Rudoren’s short, simple analysis of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s non-bombshell at the UN on Wednesday could have been called “Oslo Accords for Dummies” – as that’s what anyone who relies on her analysis at this point would have to be.
At first glance the piece seems to strive for neutrality, explaining that “each side has frequently accused the other of violations [of the accords] over the years.” True to the Times’s pattern, though, the lies here are lies of omission. Pretty glaring omissions.
The first such omission is that the so-called peace process that she says was laid out in the Oslo accords did, in fact, lead to an offer to the Palestinian Arabs of statehood in all of Gaza and over 90% of the West Bank, with a division of Jerusalem, in 2000 at Camp David. This offer was rejected by Arafat, who intentionally started the second intifada in response. Jonathan Tobin correctly pointed out it was that, and not Abbas’s speech today, that was really the end of Oslo.
The second omission is that again, in 2008, a similar offer was made to Abbas himself, which offer was again rejected. The third, of course, is that Abbas again rejected US-proposed parameters for a resolution in 2014.
In this century alone — only 15 years old — Palestinian Arabs have rejected three opportunities to have the state they claim to want so badly. Had the Palestinian leadership accepted any one of those offers, they would today have borders within which no Israeli settlement building would be possible.
We expect Abbas to leave out such details in his grandstanding, but those who claim to be journalists should know better. No summary or analysis of the Oslo process can be complete without these details.
