Israeli Knesset speaker to declare Oslo accord dead
RAMALLAH – The Israeli Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin will declare the Oslo peace process that will lead to the two-state solution is dead, a report said Friday.
The rightist Hebrew daily Makor Rishon said that Rivlin will tell the Knesset Sunday that the Oslo concept is fundamentally flawed and cannot be implemented between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
“Today, from a distance of time of almost 20 years since Oslo, one can clearly argue that the idea of separation between the peoples is a failure.
It never settled into (people’s) hearts and did not mature into a long-term solution,” the newspaper cited a draft of Rivlin’s speech to mark the 17th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, the prime minister who signed the accords.
“For many in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the concept of Oslo is dead.” Rivlin of ruling Likud party concludes that “one state with a solid Jewish majority is the way to go.”
Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993 between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, negotiators from both sides have been trying to achieve a lasting peace agreement based on the two states for two peoples solution.
The Palestinians want their future state on land Israel occupied in the June 1967 War with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel rejects the bi-national state for fear it would lose its Jewish character.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly said that there is no basis to discuss the borders of Palestinian state without the Palestinian leadership recognizing Israel as a Jewish state.
Palestinian leaders said that Israel’s demand “will never happen and we will not carry out their goals and their dream of recognizing the Jewish state.”
In September, a senior Palestinian official said that the Palestinian leadership is willing to discuss the establishment of a bi-national state with Israel.
Ahmed Qorei, a member of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)’s Executive Committee and head of its Jerusalem Affairs Department, said in an interview with Israel’s Radio to mark 19 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords that “the idea will replace the concept of two-state solution, if the Israelis have given up on it.”
Qorei, also a former chief negotiator, added that the “Palestinian leadership supports the two-state solution but Israel sabotaged it by continuing to encourage Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories and the construction of the separation wall.”
The PLO’s official said he doesn’t see any hope for the existing economic agreement with Israel, saying that the agreement puts Palestinians at a disadvantage.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN on September for the recognition of Palestine as a non-member state due to stalemate in the peace process with Israel since October 2010 because Israel insisted to continue settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. SG