A phase in the politics of the Middle East faded away not with a bang but a whimper during the UN General Assembly session when the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas delivered a speech that formally ended Palestine’s commitment to the Oslo Accords. According to Abbas, the peace agreement signed in 1993 between the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) President Yasser Arafat no longer holds relevance since Israel flagrantly violated its terms and Palestine could not afford to persist in this one-sided arrangement. He called for the world to formally recognise Palestine as a state under occupation and to have Israel assume the responsibilities of an occupying power under international law. The Oslo Accords were the result of a series of secret meetings facilitated by Norway so that the two parties could make the turn from war to peace through political negotiations. The Accords provided a basis of cooperation, established a framework for negotiations and called for a comprehensive peace settlement within five years. Most crucially, it gave currency to a two-state solution, but the peace process was besieged by militant opponents of negotiations on both sides, and once the hardliner government of Benjamin Netanyahu came to power, it ensured that the peace plan was never implemented. It was clear to all observers that sticking to the precepts of the Oslo agreement was a hollow sham and Abbas’s announcement has not set the world alight precisely because for all intents and purposes the Accords have long been dead in the water. Now that even the pretence of maintaining the fiction of achieving a viable two-state solution has been dropped, the political and psychological impact the announcement will have on the beleaguered masses of Palestine is likely to be explosive. The situation in East Jerusalem was already tense with the Israeli military’s assault on Al-Aqsa mosque, which resulted in deadly clashes, but now the tense climate is exacerbating further after a few incidents of Palestinian youths stabbing to death Jewsih settlers. The Israeli state has predictably reacted in a disproportionate manner by deploying deadly force indiscriminately and taking the unprecedented step of severely restricting entry in the Old City of Jerusalem for Palestinians. The Netanyahu government continues its assaults on the Palestinian people without any reproach from any quarter. The Palestinians who, as an occupied people, have the right to defend themselves are the ones who are instead stigmatised for reacting in the only way they can to the atrocities they suffer. Amidst rising tensions, the prospects of a destructive widespread third Palestinian Intifada are increasing. The brave but battered people of Palestine stand alone, and can expect no help from the duplicitous Muslim ‘community’ that does not support magnanimous words in favour of Palestine with credible action. Netanyahu must be reigned in to prevent a likely mass tragedy. *