The Fatal Flaw That Doomed the Oslo Accords
The very feature of the agreement that was supposed to ensure its success was its undoing.
It hardly seems possible that it’s been 25 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, that hopeful moment when peace between Palestinians and Israelis seemed at hand. In retrospect, the Accords seem less a triumph than an abject failure. Most observers, trying to understand what went wrong, fight over who to blame. The more constructive question is not who, but rather what, to blame. What doomed the Oslo Accords is also what made them possible in the first place: constructive ambiguity.
Given decades of war and bloodshed, the theory went, the two sides could not be expected to immediately settle their core disputes; an interim period of trust-building was required. It
