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NORMAN PODHORETZ:
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The war Oslo Wrought
 I wish I could come up with a catchy label for the second intifada, but in my judgment, the two best candidates are either "The War that Oslo Wrought" or "The Peace-Process War." Unfortunately both are too clumsy to be adopted.
Nevertheless, each in its own way captures the truth about the latest front in the continuing struggle the Arab/Muslim world began waging against the Jewish state even before Israel was actually established.
Nor is this a matter of hindsight. Some of us predicted when the Oslo accords were signed that they would lead not to peace but to war. For this we were derided and dismissed by the architects and supporters of that nefarious treaty, which has earned a place of dishonor in the dark history of appeasement alongside the agreement concluded in Munich in 1938 by Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler.
I must confess, however, that while we were right in general, none of us foresaw the precise nature of the coming war. What we anticipated was "old-fashioned" Palestinian terrorism designed to provoke Israeli reprisals, which would in turn escalate into a mighty last-ditch jihad by the Arab states aimed at a "final solution" of their own version of the "Jewish problem." Well, the terrorism materialized, but in a form more diabolically evil than we had been capable of imagining.
Now it remains to be seen whether The War That Oslo Wrought will end in a return to the deal that triggered it. If so, Shimon Peres and his confederates, incurably blinded by their illusions, will have created the conditions for yet another war to which his name will deserve to be attached.
Norman Podhoretz was editor of Commentary magazine
from 1960-1995, and is the author of "My Love Affair With America:
The Cautionary Tale of a Cheerful Conservative."
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