Fifteen years ago, when I made the first of many reporting trips to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, it was already clear that the “two- state solution” envisaged by the Oslo peace process was running out of road.

The sense of hopelessness both in Gaza and on the West Bank was palpable. No one I met believed there was likely to be a deal to create a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future.

When I returned this summer to investigate the Palestinian Authority’s brutality and corruption, I discovered that such feelings had grown even more bitter and intense.

Most Palestinians, I found, now respond to the term “Oslo” with a mixture of ridicule and despair.

On two occasions, an agreement has seemed quite close. At Camp David in 2000, Yasser Arafat rejected a “final status” offer brokered by US President Bill Clinton in which many had invested high hopes.

And in 2008, Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, rejected a significantly more generous offer from Ehud Olmert, which would have seen Israel abandon almost all of Judea and Samaria and cede control of the Old City of Jerusalem.
(By then, of course, Hamas had seized control of Gaza in a bloody coup following Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, creating the schism with the West Bank that persists to this day.)

The narrative pushed by many in the West blames only Israel for Oslo’s failure. The Jewish state is criticised for occupying three-quarters of “historic Palestine” — though there has never been any such place — and for changing the “facts on the ground” with settlements.

There is, however, another dimension almost invariably missing from such analysis: the PA’s diminishing legitimacy among Palestinians. Thanks to endemic corruption, this should not come as a surprise.

Why did Arafat and Abbas reject Israel’s offers? One reason was that they knew they had little chance of uniting their people behind them. Indeed, one Palestinian analyst told me that if Abbas had accepted Olmert’s offer, he believed he would have been shot.

Western democracies — which have propped up the PA with billions of pounds in aid — know this. Yet they remain in denial, still mouthing Oslo Process platitudes which envisage the two-state solution just over the horizon. We saw this yet again during President Joe Biden’s visit to the region in July.

One reason is the fear that fresh elections would herald another Hamas victory. Some in Israel’s defence and intelligence establishment emphasise this point, for the unsatisfactory status quo suits them.

A final deal may be a distant prospect, but most of the time, coordination with the PA’s security forces functions reasonably well, providing Israel with valuable intelligence.

Sometimes, it gives Israeli forces the ability to head off terrorist attacks with pre-emptive arrests — although even this seems to be breaking down amid PA incompetence, as IDF chief Aviv Kochavi said this week.

Meanwhile, in the political vacuum created by the vanishing Oslo dream, other, more radical “solutions” have gained traction.

For some Palestinians and their burgeoning acolytes in the West, the answer is a “one-state” solution, in effect, the resuscitation of the old Soviet demand for a “democratic, secular state”.

This is no solution at all, of course, merely a recipe for the Jewish state’s destruction.
On parts of the Israeli right, meanwhile, the demand is for the annexation of Judea and Samaria, ending the vision of Palestinian statehood once and for all.

After 30 years of frustration, one can see the allure. But the consequences for Israel’s place in the world would be catastrophic.

At a stroke, the “Israeli apartheid” smear peddled by Amnesty International and others would be given credence, with the Jewish state seen as a global pariah.

However, there is a third way. Instead of merely paying lip service to Palestine’s democratic movements, the West should support them, making clear that unless the PA carries out sweeping, meaningful reform, it will be allowed to collapse.

Aid should be strictly conditional, and if corruption, abuse, torture and political murder continue, permanently withdrawn.

The Palestinians’ greatest asset is their human capital. Allowing their people the space to express themselves, and to enjoy the rights supposedly enshrined in their constitution, might just create the conditions where a democratically-accountable leadership could negotiate a final status deal and make it stick.

To give peace a chance, Palestinians need freedom — and Israeli and Western leaders need the courage to provide it.