PEACE PROCESS SUICIDE: An interesting piece by Anne Applebaum in Slate citing Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist, on how the Oslo process created the seeds of the current terrorism. The ramifications are, Applebaum writes, that:

everyone involved should look hard at the past decade and ask a few tough questions. How wise was it, for example, to begin a peace process that had no clear outcome? How successful can such negotiations ever be if the partners involved have not yet agreed on what the endgame will look like—and have not yet renounced violence? How successful can they be if the interim arrangements simply create more frustration?

If Oslo did make the situation worse, then we all have some rethinking to do. By accepting long, drawn out, halfway solutions, the promoters of peace appear to have undermined the notion of "peace" itself. I hope it is not too late to restore it.

I think that in order to succeed, a peace process needs to confront the fundamental issues right away. A process which neglects fundamental disagreements in favor of "confidence-building measures" only promote misunderstandings regarding those fundamental issues, which will lead to more violence when they can no longer be ignored. You don't solve fundamental disagreements by agreeing on minor points; you solve them by arguing about them - be it at the negotiating table or the battlefield. While the latter sounds harsh, ignoring the need to determine who has won will only lead to more violence as a result of a failed "peace process," which failure will make peace harder to achieve.