it might be said in
hindsight that Oslo ultimately failed because while its fashioners set
in motion a process that could potentially lead to trust and confidence,
they did not establish mechanisms for monitoring violations or ensuring
that claims of violations could be arbitrated and corrections could be
guaranteed. Without such safeguards, the dynamic of the Oslo process
fell prey to longstanding sentiments of mistrust and anger between
Palestinians and Israelis.
The key flaw of the Oslo process lay in the philosophical conceit that the most intractable differences could simply be deferred to the end of the process while the implementation of interim agreements would build the mutual trust and confidence to be able to tackle the tougher issues. It didn't work that way. By the time the Camp David talks were held to negotiate final status issues, there was less mutual trust and confidence than when the accords were signed.
The key lesson to be drawn is that interim agreements can't be the focus; even if it can't be implemented now, any new process has to forge agreement on the end state. Palestinians don't trust the interim approach because they don't trust that the final-status issues will ever be tackled.
Oslo failed because there was no accountability, because some parts of the international community took it as an end in itself. Israel continued to be treated as a state above the law, allowing it to enjoy the benefits of the peace process (more international legitimacy, open markets) while consolidating its settlement enterprise in Palestine. It is just about the international community respecting its own laws and commitments. If initiatives such as the E.U. guidelines on settlements and the U.N. recognition of the state of Palestine had been taken before, the situation now would be different.
Oslo had some important elements, such as a clear time frame (five years) and Israel's acceptance that the endgame was application of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which does not recognize the acquisition of land through the use of force. Israel also had to commit to discuss as final-status issues subjects that they never accepted to discuss before, such as Jerusalem and refugees. It even had to deliver a letter assuring that Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem as well as Christian and Muslim holy shrines would be preserved during the interim period, just as it committed to free all pre-Oslo prisoners and not take any action on the ground that could predetermine the result of negotiations -- namely settlement construction. Israel abused that, implementing the parts of Oslo that it liked and not implementing the things it did not like. The Palestinians, meanwhile, were expected to abide by the entire agreement. It was an imbalanced process.
But none of this worked because of the lack of accountability.
Accountability is needed. We don't need a peace process, especially if it is interim. What is needed are decisions. Our internationally recognized right to self-determination is not up to negotiations, and Israel must decide whether it accepts that or not. The role of the international community should be to redress the balance of power in order to have a meaningful solution rather than keep the disparity by continue granting Israel impunity.
it did not freeze settlement activity. It envisaged a two-state solution but did not stop the main killer of that possibility, which is the steady expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. There were 150,000 Israeli settlers in the territories when the agreement was signed; today there are 600,000.
The main lesson is that the peace process was used as political cover for a process that was the opposite of peace. And the same mistake is being repeated now. Israel is again using peace talks to provide cover for ongoing settlement expansion and the consolidation of an unjust, discriminatory apartheid system.
One of the first reasons it failed is that, from a structural point of view, there's nothing in there to prevent Israeli settlement construction, and that, I think, was the most fatal flaw of the Oslo process -- that Israel never committed not to increasing settlements. And during the five years, the Palestinians expected a withdrawal from all the occupied territories except for military bases, settlement blocs in East Jerusalem. What happened was we got this area A, B and C relationship that continues to this day, long after it was due to expire in 1998. And first doubling of settlers in that period and now well over a half a million.
The other thing is that the basis of the Oslo agreement was the letters of initial recognition: On the one hand, the PLO, representing the Palestinian people legitimately, recognized that the state of Israel it should live in peace and security. The Israelis in return recognized merely the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, but Israel did not recognize and to this day has not recognized either the Palestinian state or the Palestinian right to statehood. So there's a deep asymmetry there, in which you could say the Palestinians played their single biggest card -- recognition of Israel -- in expectation of receiving something reciprocal in the future once the legality has been agreed on. But here we are, 20 years later without that and with more and more senior Israeli politicians dismissing the idea of that.
One thing is that we certainly need a third party (and that would have to be the United States because there isn't an alternative) that can hold the parties accountable to what they have agreed to. That is essential. I really think that a process with an asymmetry of power, like the one that exists between Israel and the Palestinians, requires a third-party guarantor that enforces accountability.
You cannot have a negotiation in which one side is handicapped in what can be discussed, in which one side is not allowed to put issues on the table and in which the mediator is biased in favor of the more powerful party. And all of those were the conditions under which Oslo was negotiated.
The Palestinians were forced by the Americans and the Israelis to negotiate interim agreements and not deal with any of the important issues between them and Israel. The United States laid down the ground rules and was the supposed intermediary while always coordinating every one of its positions with the Israelis. Those are conditions that guarantee that you're not going to have a resolution, when the Israelis are not really willing to consider ending the occupation (which they were not and are not), ending settlements (which they were not and are not) and giving the Palestinians full and complete self-determination and independence.
Oslo failed because we didn't do enough to rein in the peace-destroying mechanisms. The Palestinians had conceded the majority of their homeland; in exchange they expected an end to the erosion and creeping annexation of the little that remains. But the Israelis didn't stop the occupation and the colonial-settlement enterprise for one moment
The Oslo accords were not meant to live forever. They were temporary scaffolding to support a transition from occupation and control to partnership between equals -- but the fundamental imbalance of power meant the parties never negotiated as equals.
It's time to explore new paradigms that will save us from further humiliation and arrogance, occupation and violence. We have reached a dead end in which there is no freedom for the Palestinian nation. We have grown no closer to a just and viable solution of two states for two peoples. We all live under one discriminatory Israeli regime. And many of us lost hope in finding a just solution.
The fates of both nations are inextricably tied together, and the individual rights and equality of all those who live between the Jordan River and the sea, as well as their communal rights, must be recognized. Exclusive privileges for Israeli Jews in land ownership and access to natural resources must be canceled, and the Palestinian refugees' right of return must be recognized, even if implementing that right must be done on the basis of justice on present realities, avoiding the creation of new injustices.
The Israelis went into Oslo wanting to remove the stain of being an occupier. They wanted to enter into negotiations because it would improve their economy, and they really got tired of having, one generation after another, Israelis being the ones ruling over the Palestinians. At a certain point, one generation after another begins to question the legitimacy and the necessity of maintaining rule over another people. So for the Israelis, Oslo really worked. They managed to get 45 countries to sign diplomatic relations with them just from the period of 1993 onward. They got a peace treaty with the Jordanians in 1994. That wouldn't have been possible if it had not been for the Palestinians. They got money from Europeans and from the Americans to pay for the Palestinians -- money that they themselves would've had to pay. Basically, they removed the stain of being an occupier, plus they got the ability to build and expand their settlements. From the period of 1993 to 2000, the settler population almost doubled in size.
For the Palestinians, it was just a series of promises -- a promise that there was going to be a process, a promise that there was going to be freedom, a promise that things were going to get better, but none of that really came to issue because nobody was really focused on the Palestinians. Everyone was so desperate to get Israel to sign on to anything that all international efforts went into appeasing the Israelis.
If people had wanted it to succeed, the international community, in particular the United States, wouldn't have been pushing the Palestinians to negotiate their rights. They would've, instead, been pressuring Israel to end its military rule. They could have held Israel to account for all its violations -- for the ongoing settlement construction, for the fact that it didn't release the prisoners, for putting restrictions on movement, for everything it could’ve been held accountable for -- but they didn't, so the conclusion for me is that Oslo failed because it was designed to fail.
The first lesson we should learn is that Palestinians should not have had to negotiate their freedom; rather, the international community should have held Israel accountable. The Palestinians -- or any people who are denied their freedoms -- shouldn't have to negotiate their rights and shouldn't negotiate with their oppressor. The pressure should be coming from the international community on the ones doing the oppressing, not on the oppressed.
The second is that without that kind of sustained pressure on Israel, Israel will do whatever it wants to do, and we've already seen it just in the start of these new negotiations at the end of July. The Israelis have announced 1,500 new housing units in East Jerusalem alone, marking one of the highest rates of settlement growth in Jerusalem since before Oslo.
The major lesson to be learned is that there is a huge power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians. And pretending there is no power imbalance is simply not going to work. This is what the Americans would love for people to believe. They'd love for people to believe that it's just a question of two sides and the two sides' sitting down together and negotiating and meeting and if the venue is good enough, then they're just going to work it out. But what they don't realize is that there is a huge power imbalance between the two sides. Rather than the United States supporting and backing Israel, what it should do instead is recognize this power imbalance and make sure that the powerful party -- i.e., Israel -- be held to account rather than make demands that the weak party -- the Palestinian party, the powerless party -- continue to give in more, to make more and more compromises.
1. It is important to highlight that the Oslo process did not include large portions of the Palestinian people and in particular the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the millions of Palestinian refugees living in forced exile.
Israel has since its beginnings worked on dividing and fragmenting the Palestinian people in various categories and subcategories. The main categories are the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Palestinians living in occupied Palestinian territory (West Bank–, Gaza Strip– and East Jerusalem–ID holders) and the Palestinian refugees (registered as well as nonregistered) who are living in forced exile.
The Oslo process, which was initiated by Israel, has institutionalized this fragmentation by creating a Palestinian institution, the Palestinian National Authority, which by definition represents only the Palestinian population living in the West Bank and Gaza.
Oslo failed simply because Israel has continued its colonial practices of forcibly displacing the Palestinian people. This deliberate displacement of Palestinians by Israel from 1948 until the present amounts to a policy and practice of forcible transfer of the Palestinian population -- ethnic cleansing. This process is ongoing -- ongoing Nakba -- and has resulted so far in 70% of the Palestinian population worldwide belonging to the group of refugees or internally displaced persons.
Through the years, a number of stumbling blocks to the peace process have been discussed, such as the steady expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the building of the extensive "separation wall". A glimmer of hope was experienced when Israel disengaged from all settlements in Gaza in September 2005. Israel stated that the occupation of Gaza had come to an end, even though Gaza is left as the world's largest open-air prison, upon which the siege was enforced after the Palestinian elections in 2006 saw Hamas returned to power.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has recently pointed to the separation wall as an obstacle to Palestinian economic development.
Our point of departure is the internationally agreed-upon position that Israel is responsible for an illegal occupation of Palestine; the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Israel officially states that it has not been occupying but rather administering a territory since 1967 that was not controlled by any other state. This position was clearly denounced by the International Court of Justice in its 2004 advisory statement on the "separation wall" surrounding the West Bank.
Twenty years later
An assessment of the accords can be made, based on the historical and political context in which the accords were born, focusing on framing conditions and limitations that could have serious repercussions for the possibility of the accords succeeding. It can also be made by focusing on the actual results that have come out of the accords for the people concerned. Lack of security comes high on the list, for both.
The key flaw of the Oslo process lay in the philosophical conceit that the most intractable differences could simply be deferred to the end of the process while the implementation of interim agreements would build the mutual trust and confidence to be able to tackle the tougher issues. It didn't work that way. By the time the Camp David talks were held to negotiate final status issues, there was less mutual trust and confidence than when the accords were signed.
The key lesson to be drawn is that interim agreements can't be the focus; even if it can't be implemented now, any new process has to forge agreement on the end state. Palestinians don't trust the interim approach because they don't trust that the final-status issues will ever be tackled.
Oslo failed because there was no accountability, because some parts of the international community took it as an end in itself. Israel continued to be treated as a state above the law, allowing it to enjoy the benefits of the peace process (more international legitimacy, open markets) while consolidating its settlement enterprise in Palestine. It is just about the international community respecting its own laws and commitments. If initiatives such as the E.U. guidelines on settlements and the U.N. recognition of the state of Palestine had been taken before, the situation now would be different.
Oslo had some important elements, such as a clear time frame (five years) and Israel's acceptance that the endgame was application of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which does not recognize the acquisition of land through the use of force. Israel also had to commit to discuss as final-status issues subjects that they never accepted to discuss before, such as Jerusalem and refugees. It even had to deliver a letter assuring that Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem as well as Christian and Muslim holy shrines would be preserved during the interim period, just as it committed to free all pre-Oslo prisoners and not take any action on the ground that could predetermine the result of negotiations -- namely settlement construction. Israel abused that, implementing the parts of Oslo that it liked and not implementing the things it did not like. The Palestinians, meanwhile, were expected to abide by the entire agreement. It was an imbalanced process.
But none of this worked because of the lack of accountability.
Accountability is needed. We don't need a peace process, especially if it is interim. What is needed are decisions. Our internationally recognized right to self-determination is not up to negotiations, and Israel must decide whether it accepts that or not. The role of the international community should be to redress the balance of power in order to have a meaningful solution rather than keep the disparity by continue granting Israel impunity.
it did not freeze settlement activity. It envisaged a two-state solution but did not stop the main killer of that possibility, which is the steady expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. There were 150,000 Israeli settlers in the territories when the agreement was signed; today there are 600,000.
The main lesson is that the peace process was used as political cover for a process that was the opposite of peace. And the same mistake is being repeated now. Israel is again using peace talks to provide cover for ongoing settlement expansion and the consolidation of an unjust, discriminatory apartheid system.
One of the first reasons it failed is that, from a structural point of view, there's nothing in there to prevent Israeli settlement construction, and that, I think, was the most fatal flaw of the Oslo process -- that Israel never committed not to increasing settlements. And during the five years, the Palestinians expected a withdrawal from all the occupied territories except for military bases, settlement blocs in East Jerusalem. What happened was we got this area A, B and C relationship that continues to this day, long after it was due to expire in 1998. And first doubling of settlers in that period and now well over a half a million.
The other thing is that the basis of the Oslo agreement was the letters of initial recognition: On the one hand, the PLO, representing the Palestinian people legitimately, recognized that the state of Israel it should live in peace and security. The Israelis in return recognized merely the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, but Israel did not recognize and to this day has not recognized either the Palestinian state or the Palestinian right to statehood. So there's a deep asymmetry there, in which you could say the Palestinians played their single biggest card -- recognition of Israel -- in expectation of receiving something reciprocal in the future once the legality has been agreed on. But here we are, 20 years later without that and with more and more senior Israeli politicians dismissing the idea of that.
One thing is that we certainly need a third party (and that would have to be the United States because there isn't an alternative) that can hold the parties accountable to what they have agreed to. That is essential. I really think that a process with an asymmetry of power, like the one that exists between Israel and the Palestinians, requires a third-party guarantor that enforces accountability.
You cannot have a negotiation in which one side is handicapped in what can be discussed, in which one side is not allowed to put issues on the table and in which the mediator is biased in favor of the more powerful party. And all of those were the conditions under which Oslo was negotiated.
The Palestinians were forced by the Americans and the Israelis to negotiate interim agreements and not deal with any of the important issues between them and Israel. The United States laid down the ground rules and was the supposed intermediary while always coordinating every one of its positions with the Israelis. Those are conditions that guarantee that you're not going to have a resolution, when the Israelis are not really willing to consider ending the occupation (which they were not and are not), ending settlements (which they were not and are not) and giving the Palestinians full and complete self-determination and independence.
Oslo failed because we didn't do enough to rein in the peace-destroying mechanisms. The Palestinians had conceded the majority of their homeland; in exchange they expected an end to the erosion and creeping annexation of the little that remains. But the Israelis didn't stop the occupation and the colonial-settlement enterprise for one moment
The Oslo accords were not meant to live forever. They were temporary scaffolding to support a transition from occupation and control to partnership between equals -- but the fundamental imbalance of power meant the parties never negotiated as equals.
It's time to explore new paradigms that will save us from further humiliation and arrogance, occupation and violence. We have reached a dead end in which there is no freedom for the Palestinian nation. We have grown no closer to a just and viable solution of two states for two peoples. We all live under one discriminatory Israeli regime. And many of us lost hope in finding a just solution.
The fates of both nations are inextricably tied together, and the individual rights and equality of all those who live between the Jordan River and the sea, as well as their communal rights, must be recognized. Exclusive privileges for Israeli Jews in land ownership and access to natural resources must be canceled, and the Palestinian refugees' right of return must be recognized, even if implementing that right must be done on the basis of justice on present realities, avoiding the creation of new injustices.
The Israelis went into Oslo wanting to remove the stain of being an occupier. They wanted to enter into negotiations because it would improve their economy, and they really got tired of having, one generation after another, Israelis being the ones ruling over the Palestinians. At a certain point, one generation after another begins to question the legitimacy and the necessity of maintaining rule over another people. So for the Israelis, Oslo really worked. They managed to get 45 countries to sign diplomatic relations with them just from the period of 1993 onward. They got a peace treaty with the Jordanians in 1994. That wouldn't have been possible if it had not been for the Palestinians. They got money from Europeans and from the Americans to pay for the Palestinians -- money that they themselves would've had to pay. Basically, they removed the stain of being an occupier, plus they got the ability to build and expand their settlements. From the period of 1993 to 2000, the settler population almost doubled in size.
For the Palestinians, it was just a series of promises -- a promise that there was going to be a process, a promise that there was going to be freedom, a promise that things were going to get better, but none of that really came to issue because nobody was really focused on the Palestinians. Everyone was so desperate to get Israel to sign on to anything that all international efforts went into appeasing the Israelis.
If people had wanted it to succeed, the international community, in particular the United States, wouldn't have been pushing the Palestinians to negotiate their rights. They would've, instead, been pressuring Israel to end its military rule. They could have held Israel to account for all its violations -- for the ongoing settlement construction, for the fact that it didn't release the prisoners, for putting restrictions on movement, for everything it could’ve been held accountable for -- but they didn't, so the conclusion for me is that Oslo failed because it was designed to fail.
The first lesson we should learn is that Palestinians should not have had to negotiate their freedom; rather, the international community should have held Israel accountable. The Palestinians -- or any people who are denied their freedoms -- shouldn't have to negotiate their rights and shouldn't negotiate with their oppressor. The pressure should be coming from the international community on the ones doing the oppressing, not on the oppressed.
The second is that without that kind of sustained pressure on Israel, Israel will do whatever it wants to do, and we've already seen it just in the start of these new negotiations at the end of July. The Israelis have announced 1,500 new housing units in East Jerusalem alone, marking one of the highest rates of settlement growth in Jerusalem since before Oslo.
The major lesson to be learned is that there is a huge power imbalance between Israelis and Palestinians. And pretending there is no power imbalance is simply not going to work. This is what the Americans would love for people to believe. They'd love for people to believe that it's just a question of two sides and the two sides' sitting down together and negotiating and meeting and if the venue is good enough, then they're just going to work it out. But what they don't realize is that there is a huge power imbalance between the two sides. Rather than the United States supporting and backing Israel, what it should do instead is recognize this power imbalance and make sure that the powerful party -- i.e., Israel -- be held to account rather than make demands that the weak party -- the Palestinian party, the powerless party -- continue to give in more, to make more and more compromises.
1. It is important to highlight that the Oslo process did not include large portions of the Palestinian people and in particular the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the millions of Palestinian refugees living in forced exile.
Israel has since its beginnings worked on dividing and fragmenting the Palestinian people in various categories and subcategories. The main categories are the Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Palestinians living in occupied Palestinian territory (West Bank–, Gaza Strip– and East Jerusalem–ID holders) and the Palestinian refugees (registered as well as nonregistered) who are living in forced exile.
The Oslo process, which was initiated by Israel, has institutionalized this fragmentation by creating a Palestinian institution, the Palestinian National Authority, which by definition represents only the Palestinian population living in the West Bank and Gaza.
Oslo failed simply because Israel has continued its colonial practices of forcibly displacing the Palestinian people. This deliberate displacement of Palestinians by Israel from 1948 until the present amounts to a policy and practice of forcible transfer of the Palestinian population -- ethnic cleansing. This process is ongoing -- ongoing Nakba -- and has resulted so far in 70% of the Palestinian population worldwide belonging to the group of refugees or internally displaced persons.
Through the years, a number of stumbling blocks to the peace process have been discussed, such as the steady expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the building of the extensive "separation wall". A glimmer of hope was experienced when Israel disengaged from all settlements in Gaza in September 2005. Israel stated that the occupation of Gaza had come to an end, even though Gaza is left as the world's largest open-air prison, upon which the siege was enforced after the Palestinian elections in 2006 saw Hamas returned to power.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has recently pointed to the separation wall as an obstacle to Palestinian economic development.
Our point of departure is the internationally agreed-upon position that Israel is responsible for an illegal occupation of Palestine; the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Israel officially states that it has not been occupying but rather administering a territory since 1967 that was not controlled by any other state. This position was clearly denounced by the International Court of Justice in its 2004 advisory statement on the "separation wall" surrounding the West Bank.
Twenty years later
An assessment of the accords can be made, based on the historical and political context in which the accords were born, focusing on framing conditions and limitations that could have serious repercussions for the possibility of the accords succeeding. It can also be made by focusing on the actual results that have come out of the accords for the people concerned. Lack of security comes high on the list, for both.
For the Palestinians, lack of economic prosperity and lack of
freedom of movement ranks high, as do power cuts, scarcity of water,
lack of proper medical treatment and medicines, as well as difficulties
in education. Thousands are in prison for resisting occupation.
Palestinian security forces are seen as defenders of Israeli security
rather than of Palestinian security. Democracy has lost its true meaning
here. More seriously, the Oslo Accords are seen by many as the most
devastating treason against Palestinian national aspirations. Instead of
leading to a sovereign and independent Palestinian state, which has
been the aspiration of most Palestinians and important international
players, it laid the foundations for a continuation of the occupation -
with a Palestinian face. Instead of strengthening the unity of the
Palestinians, the Oslo Accords resulted in severe divisions undermining a
unified struggle for freedom.
Among Palestinians, the belief was that national independence and a sovereign state would be the outcome.
Within Israeli political circles, no unified vision was present, apart from managing the occupation in the best possible way. Historical evidence indicates that the Israeli leadership has never been ready to grant the Palestinians a sovereign state. Continued negotiations between two parties so uneven in military, economic and political strength, can in our view never succeed. The international community, with the US and the EU at the head, must take responsibility for the progress and implementation of the accords, paying due respect to the Palestinians' just demands for a sovereign state within the 1967 borders.
The mutual acceptance between Israel and the PLO in 1993 was unequal. Without a mutual acceptance of each other's right to live as free people in two sovereign and equal states, no two state-solution is possible. Israeli security concerns should never be more prominent than Palestinian security concerns. The international community should not request the two unequal partners to reach a solution to a problem created through the UN in 1947. Just to dust off the Oslo Accords will not do.
There is still hope for a better future among the Palestinians and the Israelis, even if disillusion is spreading. A mutual acceptance of each other's right to exist and prosper without labelling is needed. When the parliament in Iceland in 2011 endorsed the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign and independent state within the 1967 borders, it sent a signal to the international community to act, denouncing the occupation and approving the legitimate rights of the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords so far have not achieved that. Forty-six years of occupation should be far too long for the international community and for human security and dignity.
Within Israeli political circles, no unified vision was present, apart from managing the occupation in the best possible way. Historical evidence indicates that the Israeli leadership has never been ready to grant the Palestinians a sovereign state. Continued negotiations between two parties so uneven in military, economic and political strength, can in our view never succeed. The international community, with the US and the EU at the head, must take responsibility for the progress and implementation of the accords, paying due respect to the Palestinians' just demands for a sovereign state within the 1967 borders.
The mutual acceptance between Israel and the PLO in 1993 was unequal. Without a mutual acceptance of each other's right to live as free people in two sovereign and equal states, no two state-solution is possible. Israeli security concerns should never be more prominent than Palestinian security concerns. The international community should not request the two unequal partners to reach a solution to a problem created through the UN in 1947. Just to dust off the Oslo Accords will not do.
There is still hope for a better future among the Palestinians and the Israelis, even if disillusion is spreading. A mutual acceptance of each other's right to exist and prosper without labelling is needed. When the parliament in Iceland in 2011 endorsed the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign and independent state within the 1967 borders, it sent a signal to the international community to act, denouncing the occupation and approving the legitimate rights of the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords so far have not achieved that. Forty-six years of occupation should be far too long for the international community and for human security and dignity.
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