The Oslo Accords of 1993–1995 raised hopes among many Palestinians that occupation would end and a sovereign state would emerge on the 1967 borders. Those hopes were systematically disappointed. Settlements continued to expand at an accelerated rate, the Palestinian Authority was confined to fragmented enclaves, and final-status issues — Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements, water — remained unresolved. What was presented as a transitional arrangement became a durable system of limited self-rule under continuing occupation.
The Promise and the Reality of Oslo
Oslo created the Palestinian Authority and divided the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C, with Israel retaining overall security control and exclusive authority in Area C (the majority of the land). Instead of a pathway to statehood, the arrangement produced a complex architecture of control in which the Palestinian leadership administered population centers while Israel retained the decisive powers over land, borders, resources, and security. Settlement construction did not pause; it intensified. The number of settlers roughly doubled during the Oslo years.
The Second Intifada
In September 2000, after the failure of the Camp David summit and the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon to the Haram al-Sharif / Temple Mount, the Second Intifada erupted. It was more militarized than the first and was met with overwhelming Israeli force, including large-scale incursions into West Bank cities (notably Operation Defensive Shield in 2002), targeted assassinations, and the construction of the separation wall deep inside the West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians were killed. The political horizon of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders grew increasingly distant as facts on the ground continued to change.
Fragmentation as Policy
By the mid-2000s the physical and political fragmentation of the occupied territories was advanced. Gaza was sealed off after the 2005 disengagement and the subsequent blockade that followed the 2006 elections and the 2007 Hamas takeover. The West Bank was carved by settlements, settler-only roads, and the wall into disconnected cantons. For many Palestinians, Oslo had produced not liberation but a more sophisticated and internationally legitimized form of control. The language of “peace process” coexisted with the continuous expansion of the settlement enterprise and the permanent deferral of the core issues of justice.