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Peace Process

Netanyahu: Israel repeating Oslo tragedy


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
April 19, 2005

Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told a gathering of Likud activists and officials Monday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was about to bring Israel to catastrophe by repeating the mistakes of the Oslo “peace” process.

Netanyahu was referring to Sharon’s plan to retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria without any reciprocity from the “Palestinians”.

He reminded his audience of similar warnings a decade earlier as the Rabin-Peres government signed the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat’s PLO.

"Without reciprocity, this will lead to catastrophe. I said it 10 years ago and I say it now,” Netanyahu stated, in his harshest criticism of Sharon’s policies in months.

"We have to insist that if the Palestinians don't stop terrorism and incitement, we will not be obligated to any step, and certainly not to transfer territory,” the former prime minister was quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying.

Israel has, since the signing of Oslo, transferred control over 98 percent of the Palestinian Arab population to the PLO, in addition to large swaths of land. The “Palestinians” have yet to fulfill their one primary obligation – to disarm and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure.

Netanyahu cautioned that the Arab world was becoming accustomed to receiving Israeli concessions without giving anything in return, and that unilateral withdrawals were only accelerating that phenomenon.

Speaking at the same time at the Army and Society Seminar, outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon said, “Immediately after the disengagement, [Israel] can expect a burst of terrorism - especially in Judea and Samaria.”

Ya’alon agreed with Netanyahu’s view, explaining that Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal would create a “tail wind” of terrorism because Israel had not first insisted that PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas put a final end to anti-Jewish violence.

Netanyahu warned against Israel and the West giving Abbas more credit than he is due.

"Abu Mazen [Abbas] is not Arafat in that he's not ordering terrorist attacks himself, but he is also no Sadat and he is not King Hussein," Netanyahu said. "He's not doing anything to dismantle the terrorist organizations."

For more than three decades, Abbas was Arafat’s right-hand man, and is accused of being directly involved in the planning, financing and approval of such terrorist atrocities as the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

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