Horovitz: Do you believe that the assassination of Rabin doomed the process?

Sejersted: Yes, I think that was fatal, [or at least] the first step toward the great setback. [Rabin] had a key role in the process... He had the basis in his past and his authority. Was it the fatal step? I shouldn't say. But it was very serious... and if he had lived it is possible that things would have turned out differently.

Horovitz: Many Israelis, and what seems like an increasing number of other people, would argue that it was Yasser Arafat and his failure to renounce terrorism that doomed the process.

Sejersted: I don't know so much about the process [as it has unfolded in the decade since the prize was awarded]. I haven't really been into it. From my position it seems as if both sides are to blame. Who is to blame the most? I shouldn't say.

Horovitz: What is it that you blame each side for?

Sejersted: Turning back into violence. There can be a discussion about who really started off the road back into violence and violent actions... It was the opposite of what was happening in 1994.

This, of course, is false. After PM Rabin was assassinated the "peace process" continued apace with Israel withdrawing from Bethlehem, Tulkarem, Kalkilya, Jenin, Ramallah (and one other city) in quick succession. But the Palestinians never changed.
Also interesting is his interview with Kaare Kristiansen, the one principled member of the committee who resigned in protest of the sullying of the name of the peace prize.

Now 84, Kristiansen says he is "more convinced than ever that I did the right thing." He's also convinced that Sejersted and his colleagues are being disingenuous, or defensive, about their feelings today.

"The majority of the committee had more liberal and more lenient attitudes towards Yasser Arafat," he recalls. "They must have been very disappointed that his policies went in the opposite direction. After the prize was awarded, he supported terrorism and encouraged his own organization in terrorism in a way that the majority of the committee members thought impossible at that time. They will not admit it," he goes on, "but in their hearts they must understand that the reason for the award is nullified by Arafat himself."

Have they told him that, I asked Kristiansen? Has he met with them since 1994?

Yes, he said, he's met with some of them. And no, "None of them has phoned me up [to say they were wrong] nor would I expect them to." But the "real intent at the time," he said, in a more dramatic echo of what Sejersted said about wanting to tie Arafat to the process, was "to rescue the Oslo agreement."

The wanted to "tie" Arafat to the peace process! Wow. Not only did peace proponents grant Arafat legitimacy, money, territory and weapons so that he would make peace; they gave him a peace prize too! And now 10 years later, they can't admit their mistake.
Kristiansen of course is suspect. Why he's a Likudnik!

While Kristiansen indicated that he left the committee on terms as good as could have been expected with Sejersted, there doesn't seem to be much love lost between him and Lundestad.

The Nobel committee secretary asserted to me that "it was always understood" Kristiansen would resign, that he objected to Arafat and to the Israeli pair winning, and that he was "the prime spokesman of the Likud in Norway."

So the smear is used in Scandanavia too! Kristiansen objects though:

Kristiansen confirmed that he was never going to swallow the award for Arafat and opposed Rabin and Peres too, but contested the "prime spokesman of the Likud" appellation. There is no formal friends of the Likud group in Norway, he said, and while he "supported Israel especially when Netanyahu was PM," he did so as well "when Peres was in power... I defend Israel in its positions without taking into consideration which government is in power." Indeed, he said, it was he who created the pro-Israel lobby group in the Norwegian parliament.

How naive, Mr. Kristiansen. Don't you know that if you support Israel, you're a Likudnik?
Caroline Glick in "Wisdom of the Fathers" is her regular alarmist self. But isn't it possible that she's right?

This week saw Arafat's heirs, PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei and PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, on a junket to Syria and Lebanon where they labored to shore up their base of political support. In Syria, the Palestinian "moderates" met with dictator Bashar Assad and his underlings and agreed to coordinate their positions in future negotiations with Israel with him.

That base covered, they went to meetings with the senior terror chieftains who make their homes in Damascus: Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command; Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Khaled Mashaal, head of Hamas; and Ramadan Shalah, head of the Islamic Jihad.

Reinforced from their meetings – where, according to Shaath, they discovered that between the "moderate" leaders and the arch terrorists, "There are no differences over the objectives" – the three went for visits in UN-run internment camps falsely referred to as Palestinian refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon. There they promised that they will never give up the demand for the unlimited immigration of these foreign-born Arabs to Israel in the framework of a peace treaty.

At the same time as they were running around in the terrorist capitals of the Levant, the US announced that it would for the first time be providing the PA with $23.5 million in direct budgetary aid to make it easier for the Palestinians to conduct elections in which these three moderates will be elected.

Unfortunately, no one of any consequence seems to think it at all necessary to call attention to the fact that in order for Abbas and his colleagues to shore up their legitimacy in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, they have moved to build alliances with the most overtly extreme and violent forces in the region. Even as the US is now openly admitting Syria's major role in leading and financing the terror war being perpetrated in Iraq, no one has cast aspersions at Western supported Palestinian leaders who just declared their fealty to Assad and his terrorist vassals.

(I guess I'm not of any consequence. i wrote about it here.)
She also notes that:

This is the sort of sophistry that friends of Israel like Sofaer would almost certainly never have entertained before Sharon adopted the plan. The fact of the matter is that today, Hizbullah forces in south Lebanon constitute a strategic threat to Israel. Just this week the army reported that Hizbullah is developing unconventional weapons. Last week the IDF deployed a battery of Patriot missiles to Haifa to prevent Hizbullah drones, which can be armed with chemical and biological weapons, from infiltrating Israel – again. Hizbullah's transformation from a tactical challenge to a strategic threat has advanced unfettered over the past four years because the IDF left Lebanon and stopped fighting Hizbullah. The fact that since the withdrawal of IDF forces from Lebanon no soldiers have been killed in Lebanon is a tautology, not proof that the move was wise. Aside from that, the IDF also reported this week that the majority of Palestinian terror cells in Judea and Samaria that executed successful terror attacks in 2004 has been affiliated with Hizbullah. And so we disengaged from them in Lebanon only to fight them in Israel.

Yesterday's attack on an Israeli position in Gaza with Hezbollah's fingerprints on it adds an exclamation point to that paragraph. Since Hezbollah has not had to defend itself on its home territory, it has been able to branch out. While the PA and Hezbollah by themselves may not have the capacity to destroy Israel on their own, they do have the capacity to kill hundreds. Until that capacity is destroyed or the will to use it forgotten, Israel must do all in its power to against both.
I am not convinced that Sharon is the defeatist Ms. Glick believes him to be. I think that he has calculated that Israel has essentially defeated or has nearly defeated its enemies in Yesha so that it's safe to withdraw. I think that the Lebanon experience teaches us otherwise.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.