Three Decades and Counting: Assessing the Oslo Accords through a Security Lens

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After nearly three decades of their existence, neither the Palestinian Authority (PA) nor the internationally-adopted and sponsored Oslo framework, brought the Palestinian people any closer to realizing their inalienable right to self-determination. In fact, these decades of peace and state building processes, have made Palestinians weaker, more fragmented, and further away from statehood, let alone equality, justice, and freedom. This chapter aims to explain this conclusion through offering a contextual analysis of the Palestinian-Israeli security coordination in the shadow of a failed “peace” process. It utilizes the Oslo framework’s security coordination lens to illustrate how Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip have had to (and continue to) live under and suffer not only from the brutality of the Israeli colonial occupation but also from additional layers of oppression created by their own national governing bodies. The chapter examines the Oslo Accords from a security perspective and presents its recipe and triangle, and offers an analysis of the ramifications of the security doctrine adopted by the PA in its venture to build a Palestinian state. It concludes that over the past three decades complex structures, contradicting dynamics, and undemocratic institutions had emerged and solidified in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and therefore, reversing the Oslo’s Triangle is a prerequisite to ensure a prosperous Palestinian future.