ABSTRACT
This chapter will examine the performance of the Palestinian delegation in the negotiations for the Oslo Agreement, within the context of the structure and environment of the negotiations. In so doing, it will focus on the impact of the inside-outside dichotomy, and their effect on the Palestinians’ performance. It will begin by explaining how and why contacts between the Palestinian
Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israeli officials started, even as alternative negotiations were already taking place in Washington. The various stages of the process leading up to and including the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993 will be presented alongside related crises which shaped their environment. There will be an emphasis on the Palestinian leadership’s conduct of both tracks at the same time, and to what extent there was cooperation and coordination between the inside and outside leaderships in these two tracks. This section will also include a detailed examination of the Oslo Accords:
the Declaration of Principles (DOP) (including their structure, logic, strengths and weaknesses) and the exchanged letters of mutual recognition, which were an integral part of the agreements. The chapter will demonstrate that this period saw the outside leadership
adopting strategies to gain its own international recognition which both undermined and excluded the inside leadership and which ultimately led them to signing a set of documents which fundamentally altered the very nature and role of the PLO (to its detriment). While the inside leadership were still committed during this period to the PLO and the outside leadership, the actions of the latter began to profoundly challenge the basis for that commitment. The impact of this was that the outside leadership embarked on a peace process in which it would consistently exchange generalized symbolic gains for particular substantive losses, the latter being principally a consolidation and expansion of Israeli occupation despite the peace process itself.
