Life & Wisdom Quote by Natan Sharansky

Sharansky’s line is built to sound like a calm inference, not a provocation: “It is not surprising, then” pretends to be the conclusion of a sober audit, as if the evidence has already been settled and the only reasonable move is to nod along. That rhetorical move matters. It frames disagreement as naïveté, and it pushes the reader away from debating policy details (settlements, borders, security coordination) toward a moral verdict about character and intent.

The phrase “since Oslo began” anchors the accusation in a loaded historical container. Oslo was sold internationally as a bridge from armed struggle to mutual recognition, with money, legitimacy, and institutional capacity flowing to the Palestinian leadership. By saying Arafat used “all the resources placed at his disposal,” Sharansky signals not merely failure but betrayal: the resources weren’t mismanaged or overwhelmed by events; they were weaponized. “Placed at his disposal” also implies outside actors as unwitting enablers, a rebuke to the peace-process establishment as much as to Arafat.

Most telling is “fan the flames of hatred.” It’s metaphorically vivid and strategically imprecise. It doesn’t specify incitement mechanisms (media, education, speeches) or distinguish between condemnation of occupation and hatred of Israelis or Jews. The vagueness is part of the intent: “hatred” becomes an all-purpose solvent that dissolves competing narratives and absolves the speaker’s side from the messy reciprocal dynamics of a collapsing peace process.

In Sharansky’s larger project as a dissident-turned-advocate of “moral clarity,” the quote functions as a diagnostic: peace can’t be engineered by incentives if the other side’s political culture is fundamentally animated by rejection. It’s less a historical claim than a warning label.