The Norwegian government is reacting furiously to Israel’s decision to rescind accreditation to Norwegian diplomats who work in the West Bank with the Palestinian Authority. “This is an extreme action that first and foremost affects our ability to help the Palestinian population,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said, adding, “Today’s decision will have consequences for our relationship with the Netanyahu government.” The move occurred amidst Israeli frustration that Norway both recognized Palestinian independence and joined the International Criminal Court case against Israel. On cue, Germany and the European Union itself piled on to condemn Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and back Norway. Germany’s Foreign Ministry statement recalled, “For decades, Norway has been doing constructive, irreplaceable work for peace in the region, not only as guardian of the Oslo Accords, but recently also as an intermediary administering funds belonging to the Palestinian Authority.” The irony of Germany’s statement is that it inadvertently underscores just how inappropriate Oslo’s diplomatic behavior has been.
Rather than advance peace, Norway’s actions undermine it by unilaterally abrogating the Oslo Accords that form the foundation of current efforts for peace.
Just over three decades ago, Norway originated the secret diplomacy that culminated in the Oslo Accords, an agreement that won Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat, Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize.
Netanyahu, however, is right. Rather than advance peace, Norway’s actions undermine it by unilaterally abrogating the Oslo Accords that form the foundation of current efforts for peace. They reflect European arrogance and disdain for diplomacy.
Core commitments underscore the Oslo process: forswearing terror, Palestinian recognition of Israel, and an end to unilateralism. Israel and the Palestinians would negotiate their final status issues — borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem — and forswear unilateral end runs.
Technically speaking, the Oslo Accords conditioned the very existence of the Palestinian Authority upon its recognition of Israel and abandonment of terror. Arafat talked the talk, but he never walked the walk, secretly funding terror until his death. The discrepancy grew more ridiculous in 2006, when the Bush administration and its European partners not only backed Palestinian polls but also allowed Hamas, a designated terror group, to contest the elections. Hamas rejected the core principles of Oslo: It not only refused to forswear terror, but it also rejected Israel’s right to exist. Its covenant openly embraced genocide. The following year, it staged an internal coup against other Palestinian factions to consolidate full control over Gaza. Nor was Hamas the only problem. Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust revisionist who currently serves the 20th year of his elected four-year term, for example, embraced the “pay-to-slay” policy in which the Palestinian Authority rewards perpetrators and their family members after conducting terror.
By the letter of the Oslo Accords, the continuing Palestinian embrace of terror undercuts the legal basis of the Palestinian Authority’s very existence. Palestinian partisans, including many European diplomats, might cite Israeli settlements as a violation of Oslo, but even natural growth — for example, adding a third floor onto an existing building when children are born — is hardly equivalent to financing and then rewarding bombers who target a pizzeria to kill as many teens and families as possible.
By the letter of the Oslo Accords, the continuing Palestinian embrace of terror undercuts the legal basis of the Palestinian Authority’s very existence.
Oslo’s architects say the process almost succeeded. In 2000, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators hashed out a comprehensive agreement. President Bill Clinton brought together Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to dot the I’s and cross the T’s and conclude a deal he expected would permanently end the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The summit collapsed when Arafat refused to abide by the deal to which his own negotiators agreed. Clinton was uncharacteristically blunt in calling out Arafat’s bad faith. Still, the basis of an eventual agreement remains: land swaps, division of Jerusalem, and a token right of return. In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sweetened the land swap offer to give Palestinians more than the entire area of the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas rejected it.
Rather than admit their error and recognize the insincerity of Palestinian partners and Arafat and Abbas’s conception of diplomacy as an asymmetric warfare strategy, Oslo advocates refuse any consideration of their core assumptions to be in error. This leads to a tendency among European officials pursuing peace agreements to bully democracies in favor of dictators. Here, Israel is not alone; just ask Cyprus and Armenia. As American and European demands upon dictators hit brick walls, diplomats convince themselves the best hope for a breakthrough is to force democrats to make concessions. They then resent democratic leaders who hold themselves accountable to their own people rather than foreign leaders. American and European officials may not like Netanyahu, but it is morally inverse to treat a democratic leader as worse than a Holocaust-denying dictator or a genocidal terror cult.
The conceit at the heart of European leaders today is that a Palestine state existed but Israel occupied it. This is ahistorical nonsense. Palestine is analogous to Kurdistan. Its people might aspire to independence, but it never has existed as a coherent entity and has no consensus borders. The Oslo Accords called for negotiations because disputes have always characterized the territory Palestinians claim. By bypassing negotiations and imposing a solution unilaterally, not only did Norway erase decades of precedents, but it also abrogated the Oslo Accords, signaling to Israel that it should never trust the integrity of European- and American-brokered agreements in the future. What Norway did was the equivalent of voiding the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne regardless of the chaos it would cause in the region and recognizing Kurdistan absent any negotiated deal with Turkey.
The conceit at the heart of European leaders today is that a Palestine state existed but Israel occupied it. This is ahistorical nonsense.
Norway’s actions were worse, however: By rewarding Palestinians with a recognized state absent any negotiated agreement and legitimizing terror in the name of resistance, the Norwegian government creates disincentives to further negotiation. Norway’s actions erase any leverage, for example, to prevent a Palestinian state from welcoming foreign forces such as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to establish a base within its territory. By not tying statehood to an end to terrorism, Norway guarantees renewed terror.
Norway may bluster, but its diplomats deserve far more than revocation of their credentials. During World War II, Norwegian Minister-President Vidkun Quisling’s moral compromise was so great, his name entered the lexicon as someone who collaborates with evil. With his unilateral action, Norway’s Foreign Minister Eide will be lucky if his name does not as well to describe those whose arrogance, ignorance, and virtue signaling undermine peace and spark terror.
