Palestinian journalist: "[The] Oslo [Accords], with its many faults, was an opportunity, but we made it fail"

Text posted on the official Fatah Facebook page

Posted text:

"By journalist Imad Al-Asfar

Oslo, the PLO, and Hamas

The PLO did not make a mistake when it negotiated. This can now be said with absolute confidence, and without waiting for an accusation of heresy or treason, as those who made accusations of heresy joined the results of the negotiations and benefited from their nature, and those who made accusations of heresy and declared it forbidden, allowed it again and held indirect negotiations and signed a truce, and even began to seek direct negotiations, but discreetly.

This provocative introduction leads to the fact that the fault was not in the negotiations, but rather in what was signed. The faults are many and you all know them – from not making the cessation of settlement a condition, to agreeing that there would be no geographical contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza, and many other things.

The negotiations were described at the time as a constraint that was made after the PLO's resources dried up and it was besieged on land not its own, but rather in the diaspora. Something similar is happening today in Gaza, but the Hamas Movement and its adherents are not calling it a constraint, and are not calling the negotiations and coordination negotiations and coordination, but rather understandings…

I am still convinced, despite all of this time that has passed, that [the] Oslo [Accords], with its many faults, was an opportunity, but we made it fail. We made it fail through bad management as an authority through which nepotism has spread, and in which corruption ruled, and Hamas has caused it to fail with the explosions that have led to the cursed situation we are in today – a situation that necessitates obtaining favors and easements from the occupation in fields that in the past we had already achieved, like crossings, a port, an airport, safe passage, salaries, electricity, medical referrals, and the like.

I personally returned to my homeland and my children were born here as a result of Oslo, and if not for this, perhaps I would have been killed by the American forces that occupied Iraq, or by ISIS afterwards. However, this is not a personal matter, as tens of thousands returned with me, before me and after me, and there are tens of thousands of others who have come as visitors, transgressed the laws, and settled here and obtained citizenship."