* Quote from Amjad Iraqi, editor of the Palestinian news outlet +972 and policy analyst at Palestinian Think Tank Al Shabaka.
When Yassar Arafat returned from exile after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, he addressed a crowd of over 70,000 Palestinian refugees in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of Gaza (where the first intifada had begun in 1987), saying: ‘I know many of you here think Oslo is a bad agreement. It is a bad agreement. But it’s the best we can get in the worst situation’ (Usher 1995: 1). The accords relegated fundamental issues of Palestinian rights, including Jerusalem, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, borders and security to so called ‘final status issues’ to be resolved sometime in the future. Through the decades of so-called peace negotiations since Oslo, the narrative has remained the same: eliminating the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland, containing Palestinians who are there to the smallest spaces possible while paving the way for continued Israeli annexation. This is exactly what we see, reincarnated in an ultra-neo-liberal format in Peace to Prosperity. As lawyer and former legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team Diana Buttu has said, ‘This is not a plan for peace, but a demand that Palestinians agree to their perpetual subjugation.’
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