Strategic Assessment

Current common wisdom among politicians, experts, and the public alike on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides holds that a permanent status agreement is unattainable in the near future. The growing concern is that that the two-state solution will soon be beyond implementation and that the Oslo Accords have outlived their usefulness. Throughout the years of negotiations, several approaches aimed at a permanent status agreement were attempted: the process approach, to create the conditions for an agreement and promote confidence building measures on both sides; the end-state approach, which focused on negotiations regarding the core issues; and an approach that combined elements of each. This essay surveys these approaches, and attempts to explain why the elusive permanent status agreement has never been achieved. It concludes that failures and frustration notwithstanding, it is imperative to revive the political process. The only possible way to do so at present is by adopting a phased process approach.