Post-Oslo. Post-Peace. Post-Hope?

What is it like to live a life without hope?

In 2023 the answer may be: ask a Palestinian in the West Bank.

Settler attacks, a crumbling economy, a repressive leadership, rising crime; life for Palestinians in the West Bank has never been so full of danger and so devoid of answers.

Thirty years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for Israelis and Palestinians, Palestinians see no peace, little prosperity and not a whiff of statehood.

On a recent reporting trip to the West Bank, I saw firsthand how the Oslo-era has long since expired. Taking its place is something uncertain, pessimistic and violent.

Palestinians across the economic and ideological spectrum shared with me their growing fears, a collective anxiety over a future over which they have no control.

As I interviewed people in the streets of Ramallah, militia shootings were occurring 29 miles away and a deadly settler attack was underway 17 miles away—underlining the uncertainty.

The Oslo Accords still do exist—on paper, at least. This is to the chagrin of far-right Israeli government coalition members and hardline Palestinian factions who wish to tear it up. Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue security cooperation and intelligence sharing, tax collection and water distribution, albeit below desired levels.

Yet the Oslo Accords as a process leading to a final negotiated peace and a Palestinian state is no more.  

“The Oslo era is dead,” a senior Fatah official said to me. “We are post-Oslo, and post-peace process. The only question is what institutions we salvage from it.”

The main institution in question is the Palestinian Authority, the governing body established by the Oslo Accords which provides security, health, education services to Palestinians in the occupied territories and offers an institutionalized voice for Palestinian diplomacy.

The ability of Palestinians to build institutions and govern themselves was once hailed as a historic achievement, a milestone for a people without a nation.

Today many of these institutions are in metaphorical and literal ruins.

The Palestinian Legislative Council is locked, its entrance littered with broken concrete, drywall, electrical wires and trash. Courts are shuttered.

The Authority, and the Fatah movement that has dominated it, have become shadows of themselves, hollowed out by autocratic-technocrat Mahmoud Abbas, who has pushed out rivals, young people and anyone who dares to disagree with him.

At the age of 87, Abbas now rules the last shrinking vestiges of the West Bank with a circle of yes-men and an iron fist, both increasingly repressive and irrelevant, resembling more an Ozymandias than a Yasser Arafat.

This autocratic turn has left Palestinians without a state or leadership that represents them.

Things are little better on the international front. Today in 2023 there is no peace process. There isn’t even talk of reviving the peace process. There is barely a mention of the “two-state solution” in Washington, Tel Aviv, Brussels, London or Arab capitals, as if the phrase is a relic of a long-lost language. Palestinians’ political horizon is an eclipse.   

Perhaps this is why today on the streets of Ramallah and Nablus, “Oslo” has become a slur, a curseword, the blight that is in part to blame for Palestinians’ current predicament. 

“There is no rule of law here,” a Ramallah baker told me, “the only law that exists here is the rule of Oslo,” the mandate for Abbas to keep his stranglehold on power and straightjacket Palestinians.

“There is no national project. There is just…..this”. An abyss.

Even Abbas’s seat of power is insecure. With the surge in local militias targeting Israel, Israelis and even PA security services, large swathes of Nablus and Jenin are no-go areas for Abbas and his security detail.

Ramallah, the gentrified suburbia long held up by the international community as a shining example of neoliberal reforms, today feels more like a Potemkin village.

Shops and restaurants remain shuttered from COVID19 lockdowns. Underpaid teachers and nurses are on constant strikes, closing schools and even hospital ERs. Crime is on the rise.

While Abbas trains PA security services on journalists, dissidents and the Birzeit University student council president, criminal networks and gang violence from Israel are spilling over into the West Bank and onto the streets of Ramallah.

Due to arms smuggling from Israel and Jordan, West Bank towns and villages are now awash with guns. Vulnerable citizens threatened by both settlers and criminal gangs are taking matters into their own hands. Vendetta killings are on the rise.

Ghaidah, a fitness instructor, described daily life in Ramallah as a “bottom falling out.”

“Ramallah was always a bubble, life went on as normal even when life outside Ramallah was far from normal,” Ghaidah told me.

She is engaged to be married, but with threats of violence and crumbling education and health services, she and her fiancée no longer believe they can raise their children in the West Bank. Not even in the leafy burbs of Ramallah.

“The Ramallah bubble has popped. We are all afraid for what comes next.”

What may come next is a power-struggle. Mr. Abbas has left no clear plan for succession. Once he has shuffled off his mortal coil to join the big negotiating table in the sky, power is likely to be transferred to one or a trio of his inner-circle.

Many in Ramallah are bracing themselves for a “a bloody fight to the top of the pyramid.” Adding to the tension is the fact that many senior Fatah members have stockpiled arms and are amassing private security details that resemble personal armies.

Even Machiavellian Hamas, waiting in the wings, is unsure of how a Fatah leadership battle will play out. Then there are the rising local militias and brigades with questionable sources of funds and arms, whose trajectory alarmingly reminds older Palestinians of the chaos of the Second Intifada.

Brewing violence in the West Bank and a potential collapse of the PA is dominating concerns of the Israeli security establishment, Palestinian officials, average Palestinians and longtime observers.

But the White House’s focus are elsewhere. Specifically, they are locked in on Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization.

American diplomats are bending over backwards to secure a normalization agreement between a controversial Saudi crown prince and an Israeli prime minister many Israelis say is unravelling Israel’s democracy and lighting it on fire.

The Biden Administration’s concessions include American security guarantees, a civilian nuclear program and the right to enrich uranium for Saudi Arabia and for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, a chance to salvage his tarnished legacy.

PA representatives are engaging in shuttle diplomacy with Saudi and US officials to request modest concessions from Israel under the mega-deal—mainly, the transfer of some Oslo-classified Area C West Bank territories to Areas B and A, placing them under more Palestinian control.

Palestinian officials’ requests also include a freeze in new settlements and a statement confirming a commitment to the peace process and a two-state solution. The current far-right Israeli government, which has made de jure and de facto annexation of the West Bank a central policy goal, can easily wave away all of these at a later date—and has practically said it will do so.

In an interview with Bloomberg in August, Netanyahu referred to Palestinian “concessions” as a “checkbox” to tick, an exercise with no real meaning

Yet this longshot deal, which includes zero concrete steps to resuming the peace process, is getting more American diplomatic attention and energy than the entire Israel-Palestinian peace process has received in more than a decade.

Perhaps this is a fitting coda to an era of diplomacy whose ambition and idealism exceeded, and sugar coated, bitter truths.

One such bitter truth: Palestinians are on their own.

“If there is one thing we learned from Oslo, it is that we cannot rely on the international community or any outside state to secure our rights,” the Ramallah baker said.

“We only have ourselves. We must endure. Maybe then future generations will have a chance for hope.”

The views and opinions expressed in this piece are solely that of the author and do not represent that of any organization or institution he may be affiliated with