Calls are increasing for Israel to take advantage of the current situation and effect the beginning of a long-term solution by officially dissolving the Oslo Accords.
Mayor Avi Naim of Beit Aryeh, in south-western Samaria, says the current wave of Palestinian terrorism is rooted in the Oslo Accords. Analyst Dr. Aaron Lerner says now is the best time to bring about the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority (PA). And Moshe Feiglin, former Likud MK and head of the new Zehut (Identity) Party, says Oslo must be immediately nullified.
Mayor Naim decries the "independence" that Israel granted the Arab population in Judea and Samaria via the Oslo Agreements, and says, "the 'independent' PA educational system is replete with brainwashing and hatred for everything Jewish, and this causes youngsters to go out to the streets and kill. It's been 20 years since the accursed agreements were signed, leading to an intifada of suicide murderers and now knife terrorism."
Feiglin, whose This is Our Land (Zo Artzeinu) movement led the opposition to the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s, says the Oslo mindset has led the Arab youth in Judea, Samaria and the rest of Israel to believe that this land is actually theirs, and that it is just a matter of time and of their will until the Jews are kicked out – justly, from their point of view. He therefore calls for the immediate nullification of Oslo and the implementation of measures that prove that the Land of Israel is exclusively Jewish.
Dr. Lerner, whose weekly analyses of the Middle East political scene have been read by experts around the world for over 20 years, says that now is the time to take unilateral actions to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state.
"Israel today has a window of opportunity, of limited duration," he writes, to bring about a situation in which the PA is dissolved, and the “national-based” relationship that Israel currently has with that entity would be replaced by a “municipal/regional-based” relationship.
Why is now the time? Lerner lists several reasons: On the international front, Hezbollah is pre-occupied with the Syrian situation, while Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey are busy dealing with domestic and other challenges such as Iran. They would therefore barely respond to an Israeli move against the PA. The same applies to Russia, which is engaged in Syria and Ukraine, and even the European Union, which is busy struggling with a mass influx of refugees.
On the other hand, after this window of opportunity closes, Lerner writes, the conditions will change strongly for the worse: Hezbollah's deterrent power will have increased, as will that of Hamas; Israel will not want to "spoil" relations with the newly-elected American President, who will take office only 16 months from now; and Iran might possibly have a nuclear deterrent capability against Israeli moves it does not like.
"The end of the window of opportunity will not only make an initiative against the Palestinian Authority considerably more difficult," Lerner concludes, "but it will also create conditions that dramatically increase the possibility that a sovereign Palestinian state is established via means other than direct negotiations with Israel."
Feiglin goes a bit further and says that after nullifying Oslo, Israel must immediately restore its control over the entire land, including the declaration of full sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, as it did in the Golan. Housing construction throughout the land must be accelerated, and any nationalist violence - namely Arab terror - is to be considered an act of war.
The Arabs living in Judea and Samaria will be either granted resident status if they declare their loyalty to the State of Israel as the Jewish state, or be encouraged financially to emigrate, or enter into a long-term process of national service and more in order to submit a request for citizenship.
Thus, Though PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas stopped short of actually nullifying the Oslo Accords at the UN earlier this month, many in Israel are saying that if he doesn't do it, Israel should.