In an interview shortly before his death in the summer of 2001, Faisal Husseini, who held the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem portfolio, exposed the fraud at the heart of the Oslo process. Speaking with Al Araby newspaper, Husseini said that Yassir Arafat, his deputies and henchmen never saw the “peace process” as a way of achieving peace with Israel. Oslo for them was a means to advance their goal of destroying Israel, “from the river to the sea.”

Husseini described the Oslo process as a “Trojan Horse.” Arafat and his people were the hostile army that infiltrated the city “in the belly of the wooden horse.” When Arafat rejected Palestinian statehood and peace at the Camp David summit in July 2000 and initiated the Palestinian terror war two months later, it was as if he and his men exited the horse and began the fight.

“This is the beginning of the real work,” Husseini explained.

The PLO used the seven years that preceded the Palestinian terror war to build up their power. Arafat held “peace” talks and Israel paid through the nose for the privilege of sitting across the table from him and his apparatchiks. Israel gave them the Gaza Strip. Israel gave them the Palestinian cities and villages in Judea and Samaria. Israel gave them weapons and ammunition. Israel gave them international legitimacy. Israel – and with Israel’s permission, the nations of the world — gave PLO terrorists billions of dollars every year. Israel permitted the EU and the CIA to arm and train Arafat’s terror legions.

Last year’s glimpse of the true alternative to surrender seems like a distant dream today. The Lapid-Gantz-Bennett government has embraced Oslo’s tired, insipid slogans and presents them as original ideas – as if we were all born yesterday.

“Security for prosperity,” Foreign Minister and Prime-Minister-In-Waiting Yair Lapid’s plan for “stabilizing” Hamas-controlled Gaza, is an attempt to repackage Oslo’s requirement that Israel give the Palestinians everything they demand up front in exchange for vague promises of Palestinian moderation sometime down the line.

In Lapid’s plan, Israel will let Hamas rebuild its missile stores and terror infrastructures by transferring astronomical quantities of civilian aid. Hamas will respond by temporarily suspending its missile attacks on Israel.

“The international community,” will guarantee Hamas doesn’t use the humanitarian aid to do what it has been doing since seizing control over Gaza 15 years ago, even though “the international community,” has passively and actively supported Hamas for 15 years.

This is the heart of the matter. Oslo has survived despite the fact that it has been a catastrophe for Israel on every level for 28 years because Israel’s permanent ruling class supports it.