A classic misperception about the Middle East is that there have been independent negotiations monitored by a balanced international community under the heading of the “Peace Process.” Using this narrative some say that the “Middle East Peace Process” has a) reached deadlock or b) been rejected by the Palestinians. Neither of these options are the case as careful reading of the information in this folder shows.

An argument used against defending the indigenous Palestinian rights to the land is that in launching an Intifada in September 2000, the Palestinian people rejected a genuine peace process. However, as the articles in this part of the folder show, what the Palestinians rejected was far from a genuine negotiating process to achieve justice and freedom. What was known as the Middle East “Peace Process” was an American-sponsored system, which failed to take rights and justice as a foundation stone and end goal.

In brief, at the beginning of the 1990s, the American administration of George Bush Senior decided to sponsor a “Pax Americana” and to try and bring Israelis in to some form of normalization with Arab countries, not only Palestinians but neighboring states. In regards to the Palestinians, a series of conferences and treaties, the most famous known as Madrid and Oslo, saw that the Palestinians would recognize Israel in return for a homeland in 22% of historic Palestine (split between two separate pieces of land, the West Bank and Gaza). As history shows, this deal was never sealed.