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An Oslo Post-Mortem
(Jerusalem Post)Michael Melchior - With talk of a new window of opportunity for peace-making in the air, and before we throw ourselves into a new process, let's identify what went wrong with the Oslo peace process. Never has an international initiative received so much support, funding, and international goodwill. And we have to admit that Oslo - not the concept, but the result - failed miserably. The process lacked a legitimate foothold and identity within Palestinian and Israeli society because the main source of legitimization and identity among both Jews and Arabs is culture and religion. Palestinians hearing talk of a "new Middle East" understood it as an attempt to replace traditionalism with secularization - something even the mainstream could not tolerate. If we approach peace-making yet again as merely a process between politicians, we risk getting the same bad results. The writer was deputy foreign minister (2001).