#History #timeline

Rocks and Rockets: Oslo's Inevitable Conclusion

Key takeaways

content: "@rabbaniRocksRocketsOslo2001" -file:@rabbaniRocksRocketsOslo2001

Reading notes

• Though the al-Aqsa intifada took the world by surprise, Palestinians are now almost unanimous in attributing its scope to the failures of Oslo. The author analyzes these failures from two perspectives: those concerning implementation and structural flaws. In describing the unfolding of the intifada and particularly its militarization, the author analyzes the primordial role of Fatah, the single most important factor in transforming the early clashes into a sustained rebellion.
• On the ground, Fatah’s strategy has primarily been to turn the tables on Israel’s infrastructure of control. Where Israel has established isolated settle- ments within or on the outskirts of Palestinian towns in order to strangulate them, these and the bypass roads that service them have been subject to almost daily attack, underscoring both their vulnerability and the more general point that the settlements and associated roads, far from contributing to Israeli security, are in fact its Achilles’ heel. As a result, for the first time since 1967, more settlers are leaving than moving into the territories.
• And should it decide to eliminate the PA or substantially weaken its security services, it need only remind itself what replaced the PLO in Lebanon after Israel expelled it in 1982.
• The problem for Israel is that its Field of Thorns strategy—an escalating combination of overwhelming firepower, wholesale punitive and collective sanctions, and special operations culminating in the outright military invasion of PA territories—is specifically designed to secure the status quo.3 2 Yet for both the PA and Fatah (to say nothing of the opposition forces) the status quo is precisely the problem, and opposition to it is what unites them.