Clayton Swisher at 'Oslo at 25: A Legacy of Broken Promises'

Address by Clayton Swisher at MEMO’s ‘Oslo at 25: A Legacy of Broken Promises’ conference held in London on September 29, 2018.

Clayton Swisher is a Doha-based investigative journalist on sabbatical leave from Al Jazeera Media Network, and the author of The Truth About Camp David (2004) and The Palestine Papers: The End of the Road? (2011). Swisher’s Palestine-related investigations for Al Jazeera included a re-examination of the death of Yasser Arafat (the Bafta-nominated “What Killed Arafat”) and the largest disclosure of secret Israeli-Palestinian negotiating records, known collectively as the Palestine Papers. He holds a MA from Georgetown University and a PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter.

PANEL: Oslo and the Negation of International Law

Although the process was based on the formula of ‘land for peace’, it was clear Israel was not prepared to withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967. Because none of the documents referred to Israel as the occupying power, or the applicability of the international humanitarian law to the territories, Oslo’s approach to the permanent status issues were based on Israeli imperatives.