Former Foreign Minister Ben-Ami: 'The idea of a Palestinian state has been cremated

For many years, the Israeli left pegged the Oslo Accords as the basis for the solution of a Palestinian state to be established in Judea and Samaria. Barely a voice was ever heard from the left saying otherwise. However, many who believed in this approach have recently changed their position, especially in light of the Abraham Accords, which showed that normalization with Arab countries does not require a prior agreement with the Palestinians.

One of those who has been looking on for years at the large disparity between the Oslo dream and its manifestation – and in his case, with sadness – is Prof. Shlomo Ben-Ami. He is a historian and diplomat who served as Foreign Minister, among other positions, in the short-lived Ehud Barak government and later backed the far-left Meretz party. Even more significantly, he participated in the Camp David talks in which Barak agreed to a Palestinian state on some 97% of Judea and Samaria – to which Yasser Arafat did not agree.

Thirty years later, he estimates that nothing at all is left of the Oslo Accords – as he explained in his book published last year, "Prophets without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution." READ MORE