Twenty Years since Oslo: The Balance Sheet

The twentieth anniversary of the Olso process is an appropriate time to take stock of the achievements and failures of the process. The basic premises of the article are that Israel’s goal is to avoid becoming a binational state and that Israel had a Palestinian partner that was willing to reach a settlement on the basis of a two-state solution. Although the Oslo process did not succeed in achieving its main purpose, there were partial achievements that helped advance the goal. Moreover, there was no real alternative to a process involving interim agreements. Many errors were made during implementation of the process, and it is possible that had they been avoided, the results would have been different.