excerpted from https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4209936-we-must-bury-the-oslo-accords-not-praise-or-recreate-them/

---------- the Palestinian Authority, which was created by Oslo, is a woefully corrupt entity unable to perform the basic functions that any government should. PA leaders jail their own people to protect their unchallenged power. Their security forces do nothing to protect their
own people from Israeli settler terrorism — if anything, they ensure the well-being of the aggressors.

The PA also relies entirely on U.S. and Israeli funding and security coordination to remain afloat. In sum, the PA is merely an instrument
for preserving the status quo.

It also lacks legitimacy as a governing entity, given that it has
avoided holding elections since 2006. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is in the
18th year of his four-year term as president. The PA’s lawless
corruption and political ineptitude mean it will never earn the respect
of the people it purports to govern and can never help them realize
their national interests.

The Oslo process is well and truly dead. The veneration of the accords disserves those affected by their flaws while keeping everyone caught in
a loop of senseless optimism. Even so, meditators today reintroduce the
same failed processes in hopes of achieving a different outcome. There
have been only half-hearted attempts to make things better in the
short-term.

To break this trend, negotiators from the U.S., Europe, and the Arab
world must abandon old orthodoxies. They should demand Israeli cessation
of unliteral actions in the West Bank, then pressure Abbas to name a
successor and hold Palestinian elections. This would address the heart
of the conflict and take the first credible steps toward peace.

Abdelhalim Abdelrahman is a Palestinian American and a graduate student
at American University in Washington, D.C.

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