A Path Strewn with Thorns: Along the Difficult Road of Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking

Five years down the road from the signing of the first Oslo Declaration of Principles (September 1993), the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had considerably slowed down, even if it was still alive, as the optimists maintained.1 The immediate post-Oslo Accords euphoria of autumn 1993 had long since dissipated in the wake of the near breakdown of the negotiations, confirming that much more than the signing of formal documents was needed for a state of war to be transformed into a state of peace.