Three decades ago, Israel and the PLO signed the first of the Oslo Accords, which established the Palestinian Authority and ceded control of great swaths of Judea and Samaria to the latter.

Prominent Israeli intellectuals gathered in Jerusalem this week to “view critically the past 30 years of the deeply problematic relationship between the P.A. leadership and the State of Israel, starting from the foundations of that relationship at the Oslo Accords.”

The conference included generals, politicians, journalists and specialists in Islamic culture. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) and the Middle East Forum (MEF) hosted the affair.

“To understand the Oslo Accords, you must understand the psychological realities of the early ’90s," Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hakohen, a researcher at the Begin–Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA Center) at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, said in his opening remarks. "The period was characterized by the fall of the Soviet Union, hopes for the rise of the European Union, and the assertion of…