• Shlomo Avineri, one of the architects of the Oslo accords 21 years ago, makes a remarkable confession in a Haaretz op-ed.

(From honestreporting.com, July 16, 2014)

Oslo’s sponsors saw the conflict as one between two national movements and believed – as did I – that direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO could find a solution to the territorial and strategic issues that were the cornerstones of the dispute. It wasn’t easy to convince Israelis, even those in the Labor Party, that the other side was a national movement – one that admittedly had terrorist facets but was fundamentally entitled, just like the Zionist movement, to exercise national self-determination.

We were wrong.

The Palestinians don’t think this is a conflict between two national movements. From their perspective, this is a conflict between a single national movement – the Palestinian one – and a colonialist, imperialist entity that is destined to vanish from the world . . . .

Those of us who supported Oslo – and who still think it was the right step – must recognize that salvation won’t come from the Palestinians. They’re genuinely uninterested in a solution of two states for two peoples because they’re unwilling to grant legitimacy to the Jewish right of self-determination. We can rely only on ourselves – not in the sense of our military power, but of our wisdom, our desire to maintain a Jewish nation-state here, and our ability to realize this desire, even under difficult conditions of deep-seated rejection by the other side.