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LIMOR LIVNAT:
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Hope vs. reason

Time moves quickly in the Middle East. A decade is more than enough time to properly assess Israel's diplomatic strategy. And when it comes to Oslo, many, if not most Israelis, were never in need of historical perspective to detect the egregious errors built into the process.

Israel's role in Oslo is a story of hope and wishful thinking overcoming common sense and national stamina.

In Oslo, Israel agreed to make tangible compromises in return for Palestinian promises. The promises were never fulfilled: Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state was never internalized, anti-Israel incitement was never stopped, and the commitment to negotiate in good faith was never honored.

In Oslo, Israel agreed to make permanent compromises in exchange for Palestinian efforts at combating terrorism. The warning of Oslo's opponents that effort is not measurable, that only results are quantifiable and serve as the responsible basis for compromise, proved prescient. Not only was Palestinian terror not fought, it was nurtured under the authority of our Palestinian interlocutors and hewed into a nation-defining cultural trademark, taking the lives of many hundreds of innocents and terrorizing our entire population.

In Oslo, Israel mistakenly decided to carry the burden of the "Palestinian problem" alone. But the problem is no less the result of decades of Arab rejectionism, than decades of Israeli self-defense. Oslo freed Arab states - which share responsibility for the problem - from sharing responsibility for the solution.

But worst of all, Oslo gave legitimacy to Palestinian terrorism. Lifetime terrorists not only got at least a large part of what they wanted, but most importantly for them, they received legitimacy. Justice, respect for human life, and the legitimate rights of the Jews were tossed out the window. Not only was clemency for murder granted, more tragically, the cause that murder intended to advance was legitimized. That bred more terror.

When Yasser Arafat was belatedly deemed irrelevant, the first significant break with the Oslo process took place. Terrorism was delegitimized and terrorists were penalized.

But neither was defeated. For, as in the case of Saddam Hussein and the Mullah Omar, Arafat alone is not the leper. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the enemies of peace and the advocates of terror had to be defeated in total. Government members and apparatuses, party apparatchiks and henchmen, were not just kept pent up in their offices, they were removed.

The Oslo diehards are surely to be counted together with those who opposed toppling the Ba'ath and the Taliban. But the world as a whole and the Middle East in particular are better off now that one is going and the other already gone.

What the Arafat-orchestrated forced removal of Abu Mazen amply indicates for those who still have any doubt, is that where peacemaking is concerned, true irrelevance with regard to evil leaders, must follow the US-constructed paradigm for Baghdad and Kabul.

And as both cases prove, in the battle against terrorism, time can and must move even faster than we've grown accustomed to.

The writer is minister of education.