Said's body barely cold, and DeLong is pissing on the corpse. Try not to get your dick caught in your zipper, Brad.
Here's what Said had to say about Oslo:
"The Palestinian people are paying the heavy, heavy unconscionable price of Oslo, which after 10 years of negotiating left them with bits of land lacking coherence and continuity, security institutions designed to assure their subservience to Israel, and a life that impoverished them so that the Jewish state could thrive and prosper. In vain during those 10 years did some of us warn that the distance between the US-Israeli language of peace and the appalling realities on the ground was never bridged, never even intended to be bridged. Words and phrases like 'peace process' and 'terrorism' took hold without reference to any real referent. Land confiscations were either overlooked or referred to as 'bilateral negotiations' that were taking place between a state consolidating its hold on territory it wanted at all costs, and a mediocre set of uninformed negotiators whom it took four years to acquire, much less use, a reliable map of the land they were negotiating over. The worst misrepresentation of all is that in the 54 years since 1948, never has a narrative of Palestinian heroism and suffering been allowed to emerge. We are all depicted as violent fanatic extremists who are little more than the terrorists that George Bush and his cabal have imposed on the consciousness of a stunned and systematically misinformed population, aided and uncritically abetted by an entire army of commentators and media stars -- the Blitzers, Zahns, Lehrers, Rathers, Brokaws, Russerts, and their ilk. The Israeli lobby is scarcely needed with such faithful disciples trailing happily in its ranks. "But now that the Saudi peace proposal has become the point of discussion and of hope, it is necessary, I think, to put it in its real, as opposed to its supposed, context. First of all, this is the re-cycled Reagan plan of 1982, the Fahd Plan of 1983, the Madrid plan of 1991, and so on: in other words, it follows a series of plans many times put forward which in the end both Israel and the US have not only refused to implement, but have actively torpedoed. The way I see it, the only negotiations worth having should be on the phases of a total Israeli withdrawal and not, as was the case with Oslo, bargaining over what pieces of land Israel was willing very grudgingly to give up. There's been too much Palestinian blood spilled, too much Israeli contempt and racist violence dispensed for any serious return to Oslo-style negotiations brokered by that most biased of honest brokers, the United States. Everyone is aware, however, that the old Palestinian negotiators haven't given up on their dreams and illusions, and that meetings have been occurring throughout the raids and bombings. But I would argue that due weight be given to decades of Palestinian suffering and the real human costs of Israel's destructive policies before any negotiations accord undue status to Israeli governments that have trampled on Palestinian rights the way they have demolished our houses and killed our people. Any Arab-Israeli negotiations that do not factor in history -- and for this task a team of historians, economists, and geographers with a conscience are needed -- are not worth having, just as Palestinians must now elect a new set of negotiators and representatives in the hope of salvaging something from the present calamity.
"In short, in whatever meetings that now occur between Israeli and Palestinian representatives, the gravity of Israeli depredations against our people has to be given attention and not simply brushed aside as so much past history. Oslo, in effect, pardoned the occupation, excusing it for all the buildings and lives destroyed over the first 25 years of occupation. After so much further suffering, Israel cannot be excused and allowed to walk away from the table with not even a rhetorical demand that it needs to atone for what it did."
<http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/577/op2.htm>
DP