The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and ‘Shattered Dreams of Peace’

The recent events in Israel and Gaza have been devastating on so many levels.

Inside FRONTLINE, we’ve been navigating the rapid pace of developments since the Hamas terror attack, Israel’s retaliation, and the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We’ve been working with our producers and reporting partners, making plans to do what we do best in moments like this: offer something deeper, with context and revelations beyond the gut-wrenching daily news cycle.

But as we’ve been preparing for new programming, we surfaced a film from our archive that we felt we wanted to share right away: a remarkable FRONTLINE documentary that speaks to how we arrived at this perilous moment in the Middle East.

It is called Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road From Oslo, originally broadcast in 2002, and we are now releasing it on our website, the PBS App and our YouTube channel. We are also planning a special broadcast on PBS Tues., Nov. 7, at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT.

This is a seminal two-hour documentary that charts the pursuit and unraveling of the peace process set in motion by the 1993 Oslo Accord. The Peabody-award winning film draws on inside access and candid interviews with many key Israeli and Palestinian leaders, including Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, and the late Shimon Peres, as well as the late Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, the late chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, and another key Palestinian negotiator, Ahmed Qurei (known as Abu Ala), who would go on to serve as Palestinian Authority Prime Minister. Transcripts of several of those interviews are also available on our website.

In the terrible glare of current events, Shattered Dreams is a tragic story, but it is also one that is critically important to see and understand. Though the film is more than 20 years old, and the current situation more violent and dire, Shattered Dreams is a reminder that there was once hope of reconciliation in the region — and of the bloody consequences of not achieving it.

Even as they were telling their story back then, the peace process participants seemed to understand the extreme difficulty of what they were trying to do, and the high stakes of failure.

“We are talking here about the toughest and most sensitive issues that humankind has ever dealt with. It’s not only nationalism, statehood, refugeeism, colonization —  or settlements, as it were — holiness, sanctity, religion, Islam versus Judaism,” the former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami said in the film.

Despite the collapse of the Oslo agreement, his Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erekat, who passed away in 2020, insisted in the documentary that peace was still obtainable.

“At the end of the day, I know it’s doable and I know Palestinians and Israelis can make peace. If it’s not next year, if it’s not in 10 years, the day will come,” he said in the documentary. “The difference between this moment until the moment of reaching an agreement will be how many names — Palestinians and Israelis — will be added to the lists of death and agony.”

As we are seeing right now, that list is only growing longer each day.

In addition to Shattered Dreams of Peace, please stay tuned this December, when we will bring you a special presentation on the road to war in Gaza, focusing on the long struggle between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, multiple U.S. presidents, and Palestinians over Middle East peace. And in the meantime on our website, you’ll find a wealth of documentaries and reporting on the conflict and the region, including 2016’s Netanyahu at War and 2018’s Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Thank you for your support of FRONTLINE, especially during these difficult times in our world, and I hope you find time to watch Shattered Dreams and all of our upcoming coverage.