Thirty years ago yesterday (September 13) the agreement that came to be known as “Oslo I” was signed in festive fashion on the lawn of the White House in Washington, DC.

The agreement bore the official name Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, abbreviated as DOP.

As the official name of the Oslo 1 Agreement made clear, it was a document that discussed a certain degree of autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs.

This is important to remember because this goal was eventually changed to a “Palestinian state” due to the political pressure that the US government and the European Union in particular put on Israel.

Catastrophic mistake

With the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, it can now be said that the entire “Oslo” project was a catastrophic mistake, and not just because of the deceit of Yasser Arafat, the late chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), as we will see.

Arafat’s deception was already listed in detail as early as 2002 in an essay by Daniel Polisar in the...