Summary
Chief Israeli negotiator in the secret talks that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords, in Perceptions of Palestine’s account a witness both to Oslo’s legitimising dynamic — he realised early that simply by talking to the PLO, Israel was legitimizing Arafat — and, in his book The Process, to the realities of the occupation Israelis had repressed (Perceptions of Palestine, lines 2896, 3004-3008).
Details
- Savir wrote that Israelis had cultivated a self-serving myth of an “enlightened occupation” and that he discovered a West Bank Palestinian could not “build, work, study, purchase land, grow produce, start a business, take a walk at night, enter Israel, go abroad, or visit his family in Gaza or Jordan without a permit from us” (lines 3004-3006).
- In early 2001 Savir concluded Israelis were still living in “self-delusion and almost total blindness” where Palestinian needs were concerned, and that the intifada broke out because of the “yawning gap” between Palestinian expectations and continued Israeli control (lines 3008).