This Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of the ill-fated Oslo accords. The Jerusalem Post has two good reflections on its ramifications. First is the appropriately titled "One Cheer for Oslo," by Calev Ben-David:

I can be counted among the Israeli majority that once supported Oslo with cautious hopes, but now has no choice but to ultimately regard it as a failure, at the very least for having failed in its primary goal of attaining a "final-status agreement" between Israel and the Palestinians at anywhere near its original five-year timetable.
Having said all that, there is still at least one positive aspect of Oslo worth noting, and not just in the negative-lesson sense of having learned that Arafat is no "partner for peace."
...Protecting Jewish settlements and keeping the roads open were one thing; but increasingly fewer of us understood the need to keep a presence in the heart of Palestinian population areas, or to maintain control over the minutia of their daily lives. How was this helping to stop the rising tide of terrorist attacks? Not the massive suicide bombings of today, but broad-daylight individual assaults in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that were still shocking at the time.
Why was it necessary to keep a firm grip on every inch of the territories, when doing so still hadn't stopped an unprecedented wave of soldier kidnappings/slayings by Hamas? (I vividly recall taking part in the massive army sweep around Gaza in 1989 to search for the bodies of the ill-fated Ilan Sa'adon and Avi Sasportas.)
...But despite all of Oslo's declared intentions, for most Israelis it was never really about giving the Palestinians a state or even arriving at a peaceful final settlement. It was about Israel beating a tactical retreat out of a no-win situation in the Palestinian-populated areas of the territories, under what it thought the best-possible terms at the time - sort of an Israeli equivalent of the Paris Accords that enabled the US to end its disastrous involvement in Vietnam.
Although our hopes for working out a real peace agreement with the current Palestinian leadership have been dashed, the crucial underlying assumption behind Oslo - that Israel cannot rule over the Palestinians, not for their sake, but for ours - still holds no less true today. That's why even as we now search for other ways to move ahead - be it finding alternative negotiating partners to Arafat, building the security fence, or eliminating Hamas and Islamic Jihad on our own - no one outside the extreme right and settlement movement seriously suggests returning to a pre-Oslo position in the territories.
So on September 13 I'm prepared to give only one cheer to Oslo: It was at least the first step, even if not in quite the right direction, toward an Israeli disengagement from the territories.
Where do we go from here? I'm not so sure. But it doesn't take a road map to know it can't be backwards.

The second piece is Daniel Pipes' postmortem:

WHAT WENT wrong? Many things, but most important was that the deal rested on a faulty Israeli premise that the Palestinians had given up their hope of destroying the Jewish state.
This led to the expectation that if Israel offered sufficient financial and political incentives, the Palestinians would formally recognize the Jewish state and close down the conflict.
The Israelis therefore pushed themselves to make an array of concessions, in the futile hope that flexibility, restraint, and generosity would win Palestinian good will. In fact, these steps made matters worse by sending signals of apparent demoralization and weakness.
Each concession further reduced Palestinian awe of Israeli might, made Israel seem more vulnerable, and incited irredentist dreams of annihilating it.
The result was a radicalized and mobilized Palestinian body politic. In speech and actions, via claims to the entire land of Israel and the murder of Israelis, the hope of destroying Israelis acquired ever more traction.
Thus did the muted Palestinian mood at Oslo's start in 1993 turn into the enraged ambition evident today.
When intermittent Palestinian violence turned in September 2000 into all-out war, Israelis finally awoke from seven years of wishful thinking and acknowledged Oslo's disastrous handiwork. But they have not yet figured with what to replace it. Likewise, the US government, with the collapse of its Mahmoud Abbas gambit last week, finds its road map diplomacy in disarray. It now too needs new thinking.
In the spirit of Oslo's 10 anniversary, I propose a radically different approach for the next decade:
Acknowledge the faulty presumption that underlay both Oslo and the road map (Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence).
Resolve not to repeat the same mistake.
Understand that diplomacy aiming to close down the Arab-Israeli conflict is premature until Palestinians give up their anti-Zionist fantasy.
Make Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence the primary goal.
Impress on Palestinians that the sooner they accept Israel, the better off they will be. Conversely, so long they pursue their horrid goal of extermination, diplomacy will remain moribund and they will receive no financial aid, arms, or recognition as a state.
Give Israel license not just to defend itself but to impress on the Palestinians the hopelessness of their cause.

Both Pipes and Ben-David are right.