Noha Khallaf examines the gobbledegook on which both are based Two years ago, ie eight years after the launching of the Oslo peace process, some Israeli political analysts began referring to the post-Oslo era and questioning the basic precepts included in the Oslo Agreement. Doren Rosenblum, in Ha'aretz, published an article, "And Creativity Could Rest", in which he acknowledged that the vocabulary used by Israeli negotiators was devoid of substance. In the Oslo comedy Israel invented an entire language without content while the Palestinian role was restricted to little more than nodding their heads in approval. The failure of Oslo to achieve its declared aims led to both sides being blamed, in different ways, for the failure. Military analyst Zeef Schiff criticised the inadequacy of security cooperation. Geoffrey Aronson criticised the settlement freeze, while Joseph Alpher, ex-director of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, assessed the flaws and achievements of Oslo in "The Oslo Process: What went wrong? What can we learn? What are the alternatives?". Alpher, a member of the increasingly amorphous Israeli "left", worked on several research projects prior to the Oslo Declaration of Principles and was an advisor to Barak in the Track Two negotiations and in the Camp David talks. Like most Israelis he blames the failure on the Palestinian negotiators. The importance of his study lies more in the global approach he used to reassess the process rather than in his conclusions. Alpher noted that while the Oslo Declaration was favorable economically to the Israelis, allowing for a peace treaty with Jordan and paving the way for economic cooperation with the Arab world, it was detrimental to the Palestinian economy. An important point raised by Alpher was that the Declaration of Principles was destined to fail given the inherent contradiction between two Israeli strategic principles -- Barak's vision of "separation" and Peres's "economic integration". Other flaws include different interpretations of Security Council Resolution 242, and the failure to resolve the ambiguity inherent in concepts such as "settlement freeze" and "natural growth". But the most important failure mentioned was the failure of confidence building measures between the parties. A phased approach to peace -- ie dividing implementation into a number of phases -- was supposed to build confidence when in fact the opposite happened. Alpher concluded that a phased approach would not be conducive to peace in any future scenarios. Interestingly, the first of the possible scenarios examined, proposes that the "final status" proposals embodied in Oslo might still achieve success if the negotiators be allowed to restart on borders, settlements and compensations from the point they were abandoned following Taba. Alpher characterises this scenario as destined to failure because it ignores fundamental contradictions in the narratives and basic positions of both sides. He proposes, instead, that the questions arising from divergent narratives must be addressed before any new peace initiative begins. Which comment paves the way for an analysis of the Geneva Accords, a natural offshoot of the scenario above. Indeed both were probably masterminded by Yossi Beilin. The Geneva Accords, in essence, repeat the contradictions inherent in the Oslo Declaration, and then add a new set of fault lines, largely a result of the fact that the Palestinians, 10 years on, are less gullible than they were at the time of Oslo. True, there are some new ideas, most of them neatly encapsulated in acronyms. There is the Implementation and Verification Group (IVG), the Israeli Palestinian Cooperation Committee (IPCC) and the Multinational Force (MF), an integral part of IVG. Then there is the Trilateral Committee and the Palestinian Israeli High Steering Committee. There is also a Joint Technical Board Commission and a Trilateral Security Committee, alongside a Status of Forces Agreement, referred to for simplicity as SOFA, something the MF will enter into with the State of Palestine. EWS refers to the Early Warning Stations Israel needs for its security in face of an unarmed PSF, ie the Palestinian Security Forces. As for the old city, there will be the PU, the old city Policing Unit, and the JCDC, the Jerusalem Coordination and Development Committee, all of which will work with the IVG. Last, but not least, there is the PPR, meaning Permanent Place of Residence, an organisation through which Palestinian refugees will be "allowed" to give up their inalienable right of return. The arrogance of the accord seems to supersede the Oslo Agreement. Its pretence at finality resembles a sacred text rather than a fallible, human undertaking. "The implementation of this Agreement," says the text, "will settle all the claims of the Parties arising from events prior to its signature. No further claims related to events prior to this Agreement may be raised by either party." On the question of refugees it is stated that "this Agreement provides for the permanent and complete resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem. No claims may be raised except those related to the implementation of this Agreement". While the Palestinians are required to recognise Israel as a Jewish State -- jeopardising the status of over one million Arab non-Jewish citizens of Israel -- the accord deals with issues of reconciliation in the most dangerously expedient way. The question of different historical narratives is, presumably, to be resolved by some invisible hand.
