The Oslo Accords: A critique
In order to understand the Oslo Accords and the extreme damage they have wreaked upon the Palestinian cause, one needs a historical contextualisation of the so-called “peace process”.
Oslo’s Roots: Kissinger, the PLO, and the Peace Process
See the original publication of this policy brief by Al-Shabaka.
A Peek Inside Kerry’s ‘Peace’ Efforts Or Propaganda?
Al-Shabaka policy advisor Sam Bahour translates a recent unverified leak about the peace talks that indicates major, very worrying, Palestinian concessions to Israel and the U.S. Bahour analyses the impact on the Palestinians and the region if the leak has any truth in it.
Four Rules for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks
Alaa Tartir, Al-Shabaka Program Director, discusses four rules for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, arguing that “for peace talks to succeed, negotiators must have a popular mandate. It is essential to build up a legitimate national body that represents all Palestinians … Otherwise, peace will be another form of colonialism wrapped up in modernity.”
Peace talks: The missing Palestinians
There are many advocates of the renewed US-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, despite widespread scepticism. One particularly active set of advocates is the group known as The Elders. Three of the Elders – former US President Jimmy Carter, former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari, and former Algerian Foreign Minister and freedom fighter Lakhdar Brahimi – recently spent time in Washington and London making the case for the peace talks. It is instructive to review their arguments, as I had the opportunity to do in July during their London visit.
To find peace, Kerry must look under the rubble
The U.S effort, led by Secretary of State John Kerry, to revive negotiations between the P.L.O. and Israel recently brought negotiators to Washington D.C. to revive the peace process and settle the 65-year-old conflict. Yet, at the same time that peace is being promoted, the Israeli government has crafted a plan to forcibly displace some 40,000 Palestinian Bedouins living in the Negev desert. The plan was approved by the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) in a first reading on June 24 2013.
The wandering Europeans
Next to U.S. support for Israel, the main reason why the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip continues is that the Europeans have reduced themselves to a subservient role in the Middle East Peace Process: one in which they underwrite the cost of Israel’s occupation by artificially propping up the Palestinian Authority, which created from the Oslo Peace Accords but has no sovereign authority whatever…
Osamah Khalil on the Nakba at 65
On May 15th, Palestinians commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe) that led to the expulsions from their homes and decades of exile and dispossession. We hear their stories and hopes for a resolution to the conflict, including those of Al-Shabaka co-founder Osamah Khalil, Assistant Professor at Syracuse University.
The PLO’s dangerous land swaps rhetoric
Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Samah Sabawi says that “land swaps” rhetoric is designed to protect the large Israeli settlement blocks and their buffer zones.
