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YULI TAMIR:
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Implementation failure

Looking back at Oslo, what we learn is that it was a mixed blessing. Its biggest achievement was the readiness of both sides to acknowledge the fact that any future solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would involve the division of the Land of Israel between two peoples and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Needless to say, after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's statement to the effect that Israel is an occupier and that the occupation must come to an end - by territorial compromise and the formation of a Palestinian state - testifies that the Oslo conclusion is now accepted by members of both the Right and the Left in Israel.

The failure of the Oslo Accords is grounded in two aspects of its implementation: First, there was no supervision of the process of implementation. Therefore, both sides violated the agreement from the start. As such, one can actually say that the Oslo agreement was hardly ever implemented, and thus its main target - establishing trust between the two peoples - couldn't be achieved.

Second, the territorial structure of the Oslo map (the division into areas A, B, and C) forced an intensification of the friction between the two sides and made movement within the West Bank and between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip almost impossible. The hundreds of outposts and road blocks made it impossible for the Israeli army and the Palestinians to coexist without daily collisions.

In other words, the Oslo agreement was on the one hand an extremely courageous move on both sides to try and solve the conflict, but the reasons for its failure were inherent in its structure.

In the future, one should hold onto the Oslo principles, but be much more aware of the need to form a workable agreement and supervise its implementation.

The writer is a Labor member of Knesset.