Abstract

This study seeks to explain the implications of the US's withdrawal from the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, resulting in the weakening of the Palestinian Authority, and calls for abrogating the Oslo Accords. Causes of the failure of the Accords, such as the Palestinians' inability to act on Oslo's projected date of 1990 for statehood, or to stand up to the Clinton Parameters for peace, or to stem the tide of the Jewish settlement movement, or to capitalize on pronouncements of the International Criminal Court on the Wall and the settlements, are examined. International stalemate resulting from Israel's freezing of the Quartet's Roadmap leading to Israel's rebranding itself as a Jewish state hammered the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. The article concludes with an assessment of Israeli reaction to the one-state solution.

Highlights

  • This study seeks to explain the implications of the US’s withdrawal from the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, resulting in the weakening of the Palestinian Authority, and calls for abrogating the Oslo Accords

  • The US’s withdrawal will only perpetuate the current territorial status quo favoring Israel. This has already delineated the weakness of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and energized the simmering debate among supporters of the twostate and one-state solution, with the latter claiming the backing of a wide spectrum of Palestinians, as well as international sympathizers

  • What really frightened the majority of Palestinians, was his readiness to set up provisional borders which would have made his experiment resemble the solution envisaged by the Roadmap, leading to a negotiated final settlement

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Summary

The PA and the Peace Process

Nothing has humiliated the weak and vanquished Palestinians more than the rewards which they received after engaging in peace negotiations. This loss was the result of the expansion of the settlements, the building of the Apartheid Wall (Separation Wall, the barrier), and the construction of roads for the settlers’ exclusive use All of these developed since the signing of the Oslo Accords, not before.[5] Some American officials like Robert Danin, former National Security Council member, argued that Palestinians have little to gain from establishing a sovereign state, which in addition to this diminished territory, lacked control over 60 percent of the West Bank, known as Area C.6. Some American officials like Robert Danin, former National Security Council member, argued that Palestinians have little to gain from establishing a sovereign state, which in addition to this diminished territory, lacked control over 60 percent of the West Bank, known as Area C.6 Excluded from their jurisdiction after the Oslo Accords, Area C encompassed the larger settlement blocks

The Settlements and the Peace Talks
The Roadmap to Nowhere
Provisional Borders and the Peace
Provisional versus Permanent Borders
Collapsing the PA
Is the US the Midwife of All Solutions?
The Decline of the Oslo Peace
Findings
Conclusion
Full Text
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