Promoting Democracy. Manal A. Jamal

issued a “Cabinet Communique” elaborating on its understanding of the Oslo Accords and declared that “details of the further stages of the redeployment in Judea and Samaria will be determined by the Government of Israel.”34 These gestures were not simply symbolic but reaffirmed Israel’s insistence that it would unilaterally shape the final outcome. Benjamin Netanyahu’s term as prime minister, like his subsequent terms, further pushed Israel’s unilateralism.

      Twenty years after the signing of the DOP, the Israelis and Palestinians were no closer to peace: no progress had been made in terms of final status negotiations. In terms of military presence, the Israeli military had simply redeployed around Palestinian towns and was still very present. According to a number of Western mainstream narratives, the two sides were close to reaching an agreement at the Camp David negotiations of 2000. Palestinian accounts, however, maintained that the negotiating positions of the two sides were unbridgeable. By the close of 2017, Israel’s policies of institutionalized separation between the occupied territories and Israel had created a mental chasm that blinded and prevented the Israeli establishment, and perhaps even the public, from grasping the extent to which Palestinian lives had deteriorated and their circumstances had become unsustainable.

      The Post-Oslo Era and the Reconstitution of Palestinian Political Life

      The noninclusivity of the Oslo Accords and subsequent implementation agreements further polarized the Palestinian political landscape. In general, three political tendencies emerged in relation to the Oslo accords: Fatah and its clientelistic networks, the Opposition, and the Liberal Moderates. These tendencies included the relevant political organization, as well as loosely affiliated individual and groups—affiliations based on various forms of group membership, political beliefs, or sometimes even shared labels, such as “Islamist.”35 They (the tendencies) vis-à-vis the accords remained relatively unchanged over time, albeit with minor shifts in tone or degree in various periods; the changes were often tactical and not fundamental in terms of how they related to the accords. Each of these tendencies initially adopted a different strategy in relation to the peace accords that was often conditioned by their ability to access Western foreign donor funding or other sources of funding. Because of the interests of Western foreign donors, especially state-sponsored donors, they were more likely to fund groups that supported the peace accords and were in a better position to promote a “post–Cold War liberal order.”36 The availability of Western foreign donor assistance, hence, played a critical role in mediating relations between these different groups.

      Members and groups affiliated with Fatah, the leadership party of the PA and the broker of the Oslo Accords, were the staunchest supporters of the Oslo peace process. Although groups and individuals affiliated with Fatah were eligible to receive foreign donor funding, often these groups did not seek Western foreign funding because of their more steady flow of funding from Fatah and the PLO. After the Oslo Accords, Fatah was better able to consolidate its financial base in the territories, and therefore enlarged its clientelistic networks, including those involved in its affiliated volunteer and grassroots organizations. Fatah institutions have become the backbone of the PA. As the governing body of the PA, all groups affiliated with Fatah sought to expand their grassroots bases so as to maintain Fatah’s primacy in Palestinian society.