Camille Mansour is secretary-general of the Institute for Palestine Studies Board of Trustees and a member of Birzeit University’s Board of Trustees. He was professor of international relations and Middle East politics at Paris University from 1984 to 2004, and taught at Birzeit University where he founded and headed the Institute of Law (1994–2000) and established al-Muqtafi, the Palestine Judicial and Legislative Databank. He is currently chief editor of the Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, a joint project of the Institute for Palestine Studies and the Palestinian Museum. His books include Beyond Alliance: Israel in US Foreign Policy (Columbia University Press, 1994) and Transformed Landscapes: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East in Honor of Walid Khalidi (AUC Press, 2009).
From this author
A quarter of a century since the signing of the Oslo Accords, an independent and sovereign Palestinian state has become little more than a myth as Israel continues to expand its settler colonial project and military occupation. Oslo’s structure and framework are to blame for this reality, as the Accords were not a peace agreement but a security arrangement between colonizer and colonized.
Since the 1980s the Palestine Liberation Organization has aimed for a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Drawing on past Palestinian negotiating experience and the situation on the ground, this Policy Brief identifies some of the areas relating to sovereignty (e.g. armaments, alliances, crossings, borders, Israeli military posts in the West Bank) that Israel and the PLO would have to negotiate in the event that serious talks aimed at reaching a peace treaty are held.
