2019 Winner: Failure of International Mediation in Ethnic Conflict: the Oslo Accords and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Project Information
Failure of International Mediation in Ethnic Conflict: the Oslo Accords and the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Social Sciences
Poli 190V
At this point, the Israel-Palestine conflict has been going in earnest for nearly a century. Throughout the conflict, repeated attempts have been made to bring it to a close, yet none were successful. However, at the time of their signing in 1993 and 1995, the Oslo Accords were applauded as groundbreaking attempts at ending the Israel-Palestine conflict. Unfortunately, the hope that accompanied the sight of Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands on the White House lawn quickly faded away. The deadlines and milestones set out in the agreements were consistently pushed back and to this day, the agreement has never been implemented. This paper seeks to answer the long-debated question of why the Oslo Accords failed in their goal of ending the Israel-Palestine conflict by examining the content of the agreements themselves. I conclude that lack of specificity, mediator bias, and lack of reconciliation in the agreement contributed to their ultimate failure. As the situation in Israel and Palestine has continued to worsen, it is increasingly important to examine the shortcomings of past agreements in order to better inform our understanding of how to precede in future mediation attempts.
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Students
  • Shannon Elise Nichols (Nine)
Mentors