Why Did The Accords Fail

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Why did the Oslo I Accords Fail to Achieve their Goals? The sight of historic enemies shaking hands on the White House lawn in September 1993 raised great hopes that the Israel-Palestine conflict, one of the most intractable conflicts of the twentieth century, was on the verge of resolution. However, in this twenty second year since Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) concluded the Oslo I Accords (the Accords), or the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government for Palestine (DoP), the conflict has arguably deteriorated to a point far worse than during any other period. The Accords were not a peace treaty or a final settlement of any kind, but were rather an agenda on method and timetables to negotiate such…show more content…
to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.” However, as an attempt to set up a framework that would lead to the resolution of the conflict, it failed to achieve its goals. The initiation of the Accords in September 1993 brought with it the hope among Palestinians and Israelis that a resolution to the conflict was attainable. Yet, in the years between Oslo’s inception and its unofficial ‘end’ in September 2000, when the Second Intifada began, conditions in the West Bank and Gaza steadily and dramatically deteriorated to a point far worse than during any other period of Israeli occupation and the death toll has increased on both sides. Grievances have been further entrenched, the sides further polarised, suffering has been exaggerated, and peace has moved further out of…show more content…
The attempt to build peace along liberal lines in this context was flawed in the sense that it meant that, to succeed, relations between Israelis and Palestinians would have to be better than the general character of inter-state relations in the region. Instead, the rise of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the 1990s and the Oslo negotiations in 1993 can be attributed to the combined impact of the Intifada, which began in 1987, the 1991 Gulf War and the end of the Cold War, which provided for a shift in the balance of power that led to changes in Israeli and Palestinian policy. While this structural shift in the international system resulted in a broad convergence of interests of the Rabin government and Arafat-led PLO in the early 1990s, leading to a situation that was more conductive to cooperation that at any previous time, this did not necessarily give them a strong interest in conflict resolution. Furthermore, while these changes enabled the Israeli and Palestinian moderates to push the process forward. they were hard pressed to bring it to

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