ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that many analysts regard the Oslo accords as the cornerstone of more than two decades of peace-making efforts between Israelis and Palestinians, it has become clear in recent years that the political situation has changed fundamentally since the signing of the agreements. Reflecting a new internal politics caused by frustration at their inability to establish an independent state alongside Israel, the Palestinian public elected a government and Legislative Council dominated by Hamas in 2006. In doing so, the Palestinians effectively brought the Oslo chapter to a close and declared the beginning of a new stage of confrontation. They were following the footsteps of Israel. In what amounted to a rejection of Oslo and Israel’s bilateral agreements, Ehud Barak deliberately thwarted efforts to reach an interim agreement with Yasser Arafat at the Camp David summit in 2000. His successor, Ariel Sharon, had boasted of his bloody record in dealing with the Palestinians and his refusal to “shake hands with Arafat”, even when he was a minister in the Netanyahu government and a member of the Israeli negotiations team between 1996 and 1999. Sharon launched a new Israeli project, to be detailed later, that avoided any official negotiations with the Palestinians, even after the death of Arafat and the “positive” transfer of power to Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). Sharon succeeded in establishing a new political “game”, based on shifting from a policy of seeking a solution to the conflict to a policy of “conflict management” in the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.
