A few weeks after the Oslo accords were officially signed at the White House, my father wrote this in his “Personal”: “Yitzhak Rabin has stated publicly that Israel must come to terms with the Palestinians sooner rather than later. Why? Because Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise! Surely we must see a certain desperation in this treaty” (November 1993). Rabin and Arafat came together, he went on to write, “because of the same radical Islamic movement.” Commenting further on the impact this radicalization was having on the Middle East, my father wrote, “Today the radical Islamic movement is causing other nations to fear—even motivating peace treaties. But these treaties are destined to fail. … The deadly delusion that ‘all problems can be solved by negotiation’ is going to lead Israel and the U.S. to disaster!”
The spread of fundamentalist Islam would indeed become a force to be reckoned with, we predicted. But the deadliest delusion of all, the Trumpet warned 14 years ago, was in trying to negotiate peace with terrorists like Yasser Arafat!
“Why would the Israelis trust the greatest terrorist in the Middle East, Yasser Arafat, to protect them from terrorism?” my father asked in April 1996. “They have more than enough power to protect themselves. But they lack the will to use it! That is because God has broken their will” (see Leviticus 26:17-19).
Now meditate on what has happened since the Trumpet made those predictions, based on the sure word of Bible prophecy. Look at what negotiating with Yasser Arafat has brought upon Israel. Giving the Palestinian Authority self-governing powers in the West Bank led to the second intifada, in response to which Israel began constructing a 465-mile security barrier. The Lebanon withdrawal triggered the Second Lebanon War and Israel’s embarrassing retreat last summer. And pulling out of Gaza cleared the way for the violent emergence of “Hamastan.”
Is it any wonder that God refers to the “peace” process as Israel’s deadly “wound” in Hosea 5:13? “The Middle East has gotten itself tied into such an impossible knot,” Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times, “that biblical references or Shakespearian quotations simply don’t suffice anymore to describe how impossibly tangled politics has become here” (June 6).
The collapse of Oslo has left Israel in a position far more dangerous than it ever was before 1993. Through negotiation, Israel has willingly retreated from strategic territories even as radical Islam has begun its rapid march right into Israel’s neighboring territories.