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The Oslo Accords just turned 30. Here’s how they’ll shape a Saudi-Israeli peace deal.
(JTA) — Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States seem intent on striking a trilateral deal that includes normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Saudi civil nuclear power monitored by the international community, and an American-Saudi defense treaty. So why is it taking so long? Well, a fourth party — the Palestinians — are not part of the negotiations, yet their well-being seems to loom over the negotiations.
I’ve been in the room when Israel negotiated high-stakes questions about its relationships and its future, as the secretary for the Israeli delegation of the Camp David negotiations from 1999 to 2001. So I understand the diplomatic legacies shaping the positions at play today — and the broad implications and deep freight of the issues reportedly on the table.
September can be celebrated as the “Middle East Peace Month,” marking 45 years since the 1978 Camp David Accords (on Sept. 17); 30 years since the first Oslo Accord (on Sept. 13); and three years since the Abraham Accords (on Sept. 15, 2020). These events — and others — create a legacy that is now shaping the coming major milestone: an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement.
The Israeli-Arab peace and normalization process formally began in 1978 with the Israel-Egypt Camp David Accords that included a Framework for Peace in the Middle East. The next major contractual milestone was the Declaration of Principles (also known as “Oslo A”) which was signed between Israel and the PLO in 1993. The declaration provided for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as an interim self-government, as well as for further negotiations on the “outstanding issues” toward “final status.” Thereafter, dozens of agreements were signed among Israel, Jordan and the PLO, mostly until 1999, as well as with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco since 2020.
In spite of episodes of conflict and bloodshed and long intermissions, these milestones add up to a 45-year continuum of Israeli-Arab peacemaking, which has been bound by an overarching logic and diplomatic principles that have been reiterated for decades. One example is U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 that establishes that Israel will withdraw from the whole (French version) or parts (English version) of the West Bank. It appears in all major agreements signed since 1978.
For Israel and the United States — and particularly for Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Joe Biden — there is another unlikely benchmark. It is the so-called Trump Plan, which was negotiated between Israel and the U.S. and presented in January 2020 without Palestinians contribution or participation. The Trump Plan clearly favors long-standing Israeli positions such as that all Jewish settlements will remain under Israeli sovereignty, which is why Netanyahu called it “the deal of the century.” Nonetheless, the plan is premised on the principle of two states for two peoples, namely envisioning a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and acknowledging that the West Bank is “disputed territory” whose future must be agreed upon between Israel and the PLO. Furthermore, while the Palestinian state is envisioned to be of “limited sovereignty,” its area will be equivalent to 86% of the West Bank and all of Gaza and its capital, al-Quds, will be in the “area of Jerusalem” immediately adjacent to the current municipal borders.
The unspoken challenge of the current negotiations over the Saudi deal is that Netanyahu is no longer willing to give Biden as much as he gave Trump. Meanwhile, Biden is bound by the legacies of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump — all of whom were explicit about having a Palestinian state in permanent status in the vast majority of Gaza and the West Bank. These legacies put pressure on Biden to do more for the two-state solution than his predecessors, Trump included.
The Saudis, eager to secure their status in the Arab world, must be “triangulating” three other reference points: The first is the 1978 Israel-Egypt Framework for Peace in the Middle East, where President Anwar Sadat established U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 as the founding principle for future territorial arrangements and provided the framework for the Oslo Process that led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority. The second is the Saudi peace plan, which shaped the peace initiative of the Arab League in Beirut in 2002 and then in Riyadh in 2007, which upheld the June 1967 Lines as reference point for future territorial arrangements. And the third is the success of the UAE in thwarting Netanyahu’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank in 2020 in exchange for the Abraham Accords.
In other words, how can Saudi Arabia walk back from its own plan or do less for the Palestinians than Egypt and the UAE?
These legacies create a four-point agenda for the currently unfolding negotiations:
First, regarding the P.A.: The United States and Saudi Arabia are likely to want to reaffirm the existing Oslo Accords, to which Israel is a signatory. These agreements establish the P.A. as the interim self-government in the West Bank and Gaza ahead of permanent status. In this context, negotiators are probably discussing how to prevent the expansion of settlements across the West Bank, particularly in areas that will circumvent the contiguity of a future Palestinian state, as well as how to bolster the P.A.’s economic wellbeing and capacities of governance and security capabilities.
Second, regarding future negotiations: The United States and Saudi Arabia are probably striving to reinstate the principle of “two states for two peoples,” which means that the future of the West Bank will be negotiated between Israel and the PLO and that the P.A. will eventually become a state albeit with limited powers. As mentioned, all U.S. presidents since Clinton and all Israeli prime ministers since Barak, including Netanyahu in his past tenures. reaffirmed that principle.
The likely third point is territory. Americans and Saudis must be pressing for reiterating 242 as the baseline for future territorial arrangements. How can they demand anything less? Furthermore, it has been leaked that the parties are discussing some concrete territorial steps in the West Bank such as recategorizing lands under full Israeli control (“Area C”) as lands under Palestinian civil control (“Area B”), or placing Area B under full control of the P.A. (“Area A”). Any such change implies an Israeli recognition that the current sovereign arrangements the West Bank will be negotiated with the PLO.
A veiw of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, showing the Al Aqsa mosque, center, and Dome of the Rock, top.. (Andrew Shiva/Wikimedia Commons)
Finally, there is Jerusalem, and particularly the Temple Mount and the location of Saudi’s embassy to Israel. The Temple Mount — where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque stand on a platform that covers the historic site of Judaism’s holy temples — is the most contentious issue between Israel and the Palestinians. All past agreements established that its fate will be determined in negotiations. Even the Trump Plan, with Netanyahu’s endorsement, suggests that the Temple Mount will be subject to a special arrangement where the Waqf of Jordan (a Muslim religious society) will play a significant role.
When Sadat visited Israel in 1977, he insisted on praying at Al Aqsa, as did the ambassador of the UAE. This week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey expressed a similar expectation ahead of his visit to Israel. While Israel maintains that “a unified and undivided Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel,” the Israeli-Arab peace process has been founded on the principle that Jerusalem’s final status will be determined in negotiations. As Saudi Arabia sees itself as a guardian of Muslim holy sites, Al Aqsa must be on its mind.
Ahead of their normalization agreement, Israel and Saudi Arabia are likely also discussing the location of their future embassies. On this point, the Saudi side can have its embassy to Israel in Tel Aviv, like all other embassies of Arab and Muslim countries, and its diplomatic mission to the P.A. in Ramallah, thereby signaling that the final status of Jerusalem is yet to be determined. But they may be considering a much bolder, more-for-more deal of establishing the Saudi embassy to Israel in Israeli west Jerusalem, thereby recognizing it as Israel’s capital, in exchange for having the Saudi embassy to the P.A. in Arab east Jerusalem. After all, seven European countries including the United Kingdom and France, in addition to the Vatican and Turkey, have their diplomatic missions to the P.A. within the municipal borders of Jerusalem.
Clearly, any such Saudi deal would shake the current Israeli coalition, whose founding agreements call for applying Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank “when circumstances are right.” Such aspiration means canceling the Oslo Accords and dismantling the P.A. In other words, the Saudi-Israel-U.S. deal is as much about their relations as it is about the future of the two-state solution and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
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New York Times Reader Comments Shows a Global Readership Shifting Against Israel
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In March 2022, the New York Times unveiled a global strategy that spoke of targeting “every curious, English-speaking person” and playing “an even bigger role in the lives of tens of millions of people around the world.” It didn’t speak of being a New York or American newspaper.
The paper was following through on an effort it announced in 2016 as “an ambitious plan to expand its international digital audience and increase revenue outside the United States.”
The Times reported then, “Just as The Times pushed beyond its local boundaries to become a national newspaper in the 1990s, the executives said in the memo that they now saw the “opportunity to become an indispensable leader in global news and opinion’ by expanding its presence outside the country’s borders.”
How far has the Times gotten toward achieving its objective of shifting its prototypical customer from a housewife in the Westchester County, New York, suburb of Scarsdale to some college professor in Berlin or bureaucrat in Brussels?
An indication is available in the reader comments on a Times news article headlined “Autopsies of Gaza Medics Killed by Israeli Troops Show Some Were Shot in the Head.”
Many of the Israel-bashing comments on the article come from readers based outside of the United States.
“There appears to be no law at all when it comes to Israel’s prosecution of war. No constraints. No real international pressure to try and contain these all too frequent violations,” writes a Times commenter identified as Richard Smith from Edinburgh, U.K. He called Israel’s behavior “sickening.”
Another Times commenter, Hélène Volat of Paris, writes, “each time I thought of having seen the worst, Israel surprises me.”
Another commenter, “Melan” from Berlin, writes to call for sanctions on Israel similar to those on Russia: “Freeze assets, ban travel, and block arms deals for officials behind the killings.”
A Times commenter Michelle from Montreal writes, “I will never buy anything made in Israel ever again.”
Times commenter “Steve” from Toronto writes, “I really wish the USA would stop supporting this country. Have you no morals?”
Another Times commenter, Denis Coakley from Ireland, contends, “Israel has descended to the level of Hamas… Sadly this is a result of the blank-cheque given to Netanyahu by his fellow tyrant in the White House.”
The Times staff is becoming increasingly international just as its readership is. The bylines on this story include those of Christoph Koettl, a graduate of the University of Vienna, according to his LinkedIn profile, who spent eight years as an employee of or consultant to the anti-Israel advocacy group Amnesty International and its affiliates; and of Bilal Shbair, who previously worked in Gaza as an English teacher for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Reporting was also contributed by “Abubakr Abdelbagi and Naziha Baassiri,” who don’t have biographies available on the New York Times website.
The Times article says the autopsies “were performed by Dr. Ahmad Dhair, the head of the Gazan health ministry’s forensic medicine unit,” without telling readers that the health ministry is controlled by the Hamas terrorist organization, or that Hamas restricts what reporters inside Gaza can report.
Having maxed out of anti-Israel readers on university campuses that provide enterprise-wide Times access to students, faculty, and staff, the Times is now trying to increase its revenues by chasing anti-Israel readers all the way to Europe and Canada. As a business growth strategy it may make some sense. The tradeoff, though, is turning the newspaper’s comments section into an anti-Israel sewer, and also allowing the news section of the paper to be used as a platform for stories that seem calculated to fuel anti-Israel animus. That comes at some cost to whatever is left of the Times’s fading credibility with whatever readers remain from the days when the Times was a New York newspaper, or a proudly American one.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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Not Just Hamas: PA Religious Leaders Agree That Islam Prohibits Israel’s Existence
Palestinians walk at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City May 21, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
One mistake made by world leaders and even many Israeli leaders, is to see the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a secular Muslim leadership that rejects religious war for Allah — as opposed to Hamas. But this is a fundamental misreading of Palestinians and the conflict.
Fundamentally, the Palestinian Authority’s political leaders, like Hamas’ leaders, and like most of the Palestinian population, are religious Muslims first and Palestinians second.
The message of all PA religious leaders — some appointed by Mahmoud Abbas himself — is to deny Israel’s right to exist on religious Islamic grounds.
According to PA belief, Islamic law states that land that was once under Muslim rule must be liberated from the infidels as a mandatory religious obligation. Since the land of Israel was under Muslim Ottoman rule for four centuries, the PA is prohibited from making a permanent treaty with Israel that it intends to keep.
PA Shari’ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem explained this “fact” to worshippers at a mosque in Ramallah during a Friday sermon that was broadcast by official PA TV:
PA Shari’ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem: “The Shari’ah legal law of this land, for anyone who doesn’t know, is that it is a waqf land … from its [Mediterranean] Sea to its [Jordan] River, this is its Shari’ah law, from its sea to its river.
The laws of this waqf determine that its status cannot be changed, not by sale and not by purchase, not by collateral and not by exchange… not by addition and not by subtraction… As for the [end] date of this waqf: It is forever and ever, and for all eternity, until Allah inherits the earth and those on it.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Feb. 14, 2025]
Following other PA religious leaders, Al-Qirem taught listeners that “Palestine” — including all of the State of Israel — is a waqf. A waqf is an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law.
Palestinians define all of Israel as waqf, and thereby Israel exists on Islamic holy land. Palestinian leaders have explained that under Islamic law Muslims are commanded to free the waqf from non-Muslims.
Similarly, PA Supreme Shari’ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who is also PA leader Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, has taught that the Western Wall is exclusively Islamic — according to Allah -– and that Muslims are obligated to fight anyone who challenges this right:
Al-Habbash: “Islam is truth that is indivisible… The rights are indivisible – Give me 60% or 70% of my rights, and tell me: ‘That’s it, that’s yours, take it.’ Perhaps temporarily, yes. [But] strategically, no! … Our rights are non-negotiable. They want to negotiate over Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque – then by Allah, it is better [to be dead] in the belly of the earth than to be on its surface…
There is no negotiation on one millimeter of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the Al-Buraq Wall [i.e., the Western Wall of the Temple Mount[, which is an exclusive permanent Islamic waqf according to Allah’s decree… This is our right, and whoever fights us over our right is an oppressor, and it is a duty to resist the oppressors.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Jan. 20, 2023]
Repeating that Jews have no rights on Temple Mount, Al-Habbash encouraged the “Islamic nation” to “liberate Al-Aqsa with all means,” saying it was their “duty” because it is a waqf:
Al-Habbash: “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is a pure Islamic right. It is an exclusive Islamic waqf for Muslims (i.e., an inalienable religious endowment), and it is an exclusive right of the Muslims… At the UN podium, [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas spoke explicitly about the Muslims’ legal claim to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and [said] that non-Muslims have no right to it… [Israel] knows that it has no right to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that the Jews have no right to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. But they are only fanning the fire of hostility and the fire of religious war…
The duty lies on the Islamic nation and the Arabs in general, with the governments, regimes, states, bodies, religious and popular sources of authority and [all] the peoples, to participate in defending the noble Al-Aqsa Mosque, starting with coming to it… and ending with liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque by all possible means (i.e., including terror).” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Oct. 1, 2024]
Already a decade ago, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that Al-Habbash considers all of Israel a waqf:
Al-Habbash: “The entire land of Palestine is [Islamic] waqf and is blessed land … It is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 22, 2014]
The author is the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch.
The post Not Just Hamas: PA Religious Leaders Agree That Islam Prohibits Israel’s Existence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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This Jewish Rapper Should Be Praised for His Passover Pride
Rapper Kosha Dillz, dressed as Moses, leading a Passover seder at Coachella in 2022. Photo: @chrism_arts.
Antisemites in America — and especially in New York — are trying to make Jews feel fearful of going about their regular activities. One infamous video that went viral had anti-Israel protestors screaming that Zionists should get off the subway.
Jewish rapper Rami Matan Even-Esh — known as Kosha Dillz — decided to have a Subway Seder despite some negative comments he got last year when he did it. Dillz has visited Israel and performed for released hostages and families of hostages, as well as wounded soldiers.
“I love doing the Subway Seder because it was a breath of fresh air and some people joined in who weren’t having their own Seders,” Dillz told me in an interview.
He said his group did it on the Q train at Union Square in Manhattan at about 6 o’clock on Friday.
“People are glued to the Internet waiting for bad news, so it was nice to do something like this,” he said, adding that he dressed as Moses. “There were Black and Hispanic community members who asked what we were doing and they were receptive that we were taking pride.”
Dillz showed the Jewish pride that we all should, and he was unbowed by the threats he faced. He said showing Jewish pride and fearlessness is important in the wake of rising antisemitism.
“Last year, someone gave me the middle finger,” he said. “This year, we had no problems. Though, of course, online people will do their thing, and someone commented that we were colonizing the train. You have to laugh at them.”
Despite the Passover seder being mentioned prominently in the Christian Bible, Dillz said that many people asked him what Passover was and were unfamiliar with the holiday. He also rapped as part of the event.
“We gave the people dinner and a show,” he said, adding that there was both matzah and gefilte fish. “I think there were some worried about safety but we didn’t have one negative comment at all.”
Dillz, who will soon be releasing a documentary called Bring The Family Home about his trips to Israel since October 7 said the Israeli hostages often get forgotten in discussions, and he hopes they will somehow be returned.
Dillz, who has been a cast member of Wild ‘N Out and performs both music and comedy, said whenever possible, people should look at the bright side of things.
“I think as Jews, when we embrace our culture, we show that we are united and we’re not gonna run away in fear as our enemies might like,” he said.
Dillz, who made a music video against Kanye West when he went on an antisemitic rant, said that there should have been more outrage over the arson attack against Jewish Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence on Passover.
The rapper has taken to the streets recently not only to rap, but also to ask questions of people at anti-Israel rallies, where he calmly asks their opinions, often revealing that they have little knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dillz said that he is genuinely curious to know what they think, but at times people responded by showing ignorance and at other times, they would simply respond with chants designed to intimidate.
As for his Subway Seder, covered by Fox 5 New York, he said it was a success.
“It was really great we could do this,” he said. “When we show our positivity and joy, it’s something that I think is really powerful.”
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post This Jewish Rapper Should Be Praised for His Passover Pride first appeared on Algemeiner.com.