It hardly seems possible that it’s been 25 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, that hopeful moment when peace between Palestinians and Israelis seemed at hand. In retrospect, the Accords seem less a triumph than an abject failure. Most observers, trying to understand what went wrong, fight over who to blame. The more constructive question is not who, but rather what, to blame. What doomed the Oslo Accords is also what made them possible in the first place: constructive ambiguity.
Given decades of war and bloodshed, the theory went, the two sides could not be expected to immediately settle their core disputes; an interim period of trust-building was required. It was better to remain ambiguous about the core issues which needed to be resolved, the negotiators assumed, rather than force the sides to adopt positions and make concessions which they might not be ready to make.
This constructive ambiguity, imbued in each element of the Accords, proved to be utterly destructive. Instead of building trust and allowing the parties to adjust to the reality of the inevitable compromises which were necessary for peace, it merely allowed each side to persist in its own self-serving interpretation of what the Accords implied and to continue the very behavior which destroyed trust on the other side. And so, when the time came, a few short years later, to settle the core issues, the ensuing failure was all but inevitable.
