History
Why did the Oslo peace process fail?
EXPLAINED FROM SOURCES
The short answer
There was not one single reason. Both sides broke commitments, violence continued, and some of the hardest questions were never actually settled. In 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords. Palestinians gained limited self-government in parts of Gaza and the West Bank, and further negotiations were intended to produce a lasting agreement.
The fuller explanation
There was not one single reason. Both sides broke commitments, violence continued, and some of the hardest questions were never actually settled.
In 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords. Palestinians gained limited self-government in parts of Gaza and the West Bank, and further negotiations were intended to produce a lasting agreement.
But Oslo left the biggest questions — Palestinian statehood, borders, Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, refugees and security — for later.
During the peace process, Israeli settlements continued expanding, while Palestinian militant groups carried out attacks against Israelis. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed Oslo, was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish Israeli extremist opposed to the agreement.
Trust collapsed. Later negotiations failed, and the Second Intifada began in 2000.
Later assessments identified a major flaw: Oslo had no clearly defined final destination and no effective mechanism for stopping either settlement expansion or violence.