'Negotiation for negotiation's sake': Jumblat warns of 'Lebanese Oslo'
Lebanon's Druze leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat has warned that the talks with Israel appear to have entered a cycle of "negotiating for the sake of negotiating," where the Lebanese delegation will face new demands in every session.
Accordingly, he advised drawing lessons from the Oslo process and sarcastically called for "deepening coordination" with the Ramallah headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.
In Oslo, "diplomats observed that with every round of negotiations, parts of the land were lost and its features altered," Jumblat noted.
"Hence, senior advisors and legal experts must address this strange paradox to safeguard Oslo and its offshoots in Palestine and Lebanon," a sarcastic Jumblat added, in a series of posts on his X account.
He concluded that the logical inference from this entire narrative is that the Palestinian Oslo Accords were "born dead," and that a "Lebanese Oslo" is on its way -- with "no limits to Israeli demands and ambitions other than further expansion to seize land and water, alongside the potential establishment of settlements."
The Oslo Accords were a pair of agreements signed in the 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Signed in Washington, D.C. after secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway the accords allowed the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-governance over parts of the West Bank.
Critics of the Oslo process argue that it created an endless cycle of talks on "interim arrangements" without ever reaching a final resolution on core issues -- such as permanent borders, Palestinian statehood, the status of Jerusalem, refugees, and Israeli settlements.
Source: Naharnet
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