WHAT OF this vaunted peace process? What has it achieved and why, if indeed it was a peace process, has the miserable condition of the Palestinians and the loss of life become so much worse than before the Oslo Accords were signed in September 1993? And what does it mean to speak of peace if Israeli troops and settlements are still present in such large numbers? Again, according to the Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories, 110,000 Jews lived in illegal settlements in Gaza and the West Bank before Oslo; the number has since increased to 195,000, a figure that doesn't include those Jews who have taken up residence in Arab East Jerusalem. Has the world been deluded or has the rhetoric of "peace" been in essence a gigantic fraud?
Some of the answers to these questions lie buried in reams of documents signed by the two parties, unread except by the small handful of people who negotiated them. Others are simply ignored by the media and the governments whose job, it now appears, was to press on with disastrous information, investment and enforcement policies, regardless of the horrors taking place on the ground. A few people, myself included, have tried to chronicle what has been going on, from the initial Palestinian surrender at Oslo until the present, but in comparison with the mainstream media and governments, not to mention the status reports and recommendations circulated by huge funding agencies like the World Bank, the European Union and many private foundations - notably the Ford Foundation - who have played along with the deception, our voices have had a negligible effect except, sadly, as prophecy.
