What are the Oslo Accords and what purpose do they serve ?

After more than a half-century of bloody conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Zionist Jews, in 1993 Israeli and Palestinian leaders sat down face to face at the negotiating table for the first time in an attempt to forge peace.
Oslo marked the beginning of a bilateral negotiations process, with international mediation monopolized by the US, Israel's greatest patron, that would become the model for all subsequent negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Oslo created the Palestinian Authority (PA), a supposedly interim self-rule government that governs Palestinian population centers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza under overall Israeli military occupation.
So what were the results of Oslo?
  • Between 1993 and 2000, the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem), nearly doubled, from 110,900 to 190,206 according to Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. Today, 20 years after the start of Oslo, there are more than 300,000 Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land in the West Bank, and another 200,000 in East Jerusalem.
  • Between 1993 and 2000, almost 1700 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories were destroyed by Israel, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
  • Oslo fragmented the West Bank into three separate administrative districts, Areas A, B, C, and Gaza was separated from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
  • Occupied East Jerusalem was virtually severed from the rest of the West Bank as a result of Israel's construction of a ring of settlements around the city's expanded municipal boundaries. (See here for map of settlements around East Jerusalem.)
  • Oslo resulted in increased restrictions on Palestinian movement within the occupied territories and between the occupied territories and the outside world. Today, at any given time, there are approximately 500 barriers to Palestinian movement in the West Bank, an area smaller than Delaware.
  • The restrictions on Palestinian movement and frequent curfews and closures imposed on the occupied territories during the Oslo years and subsequently devastated the Palestinian economy, which has become largely dependent on Israeli tax transfers and international aid.