Since 1993 every violent incident between Israelis and Palestinians has led to a brief pause in the negotiations, only to be followed by intense international diplomacy and a faster pace of resumed peace-making. The same diplomatic dynamic is already underway even as military and civilian violence intensifies. PNS commentator Rami Khouri, a Palestinian-Jordanian, is a syndicated political columnist, author, and television talk show host.

The intensifying military and civilian violence by Israelis and Palestinians is probably the death knell of the Oslo peace process that was launched seven years ago in September 1993, but also the clarion call for the start of more serious peace-making. As in all other cases of violence by both sides since 1993, this fighting will speed up the peace-making process and shift it qualitatively to higher levels of equity and balance that hold out greater prospects for achieving a fair and lasting peace.

The Oslo process is effectively dead because the intensity of the killing and mutual hatred that have been unleashed indicates an absolute absence of the trust required for a peace process based on slow, incremental gains for both sides over many years. The fighting has exposed troubling new depths of fear and hatred that retard political peace-making. Israel's military superiority allows it to continue killing Palestinian civilians almost at will, including attacking their cities with helicopter gunships and missiles. Consequent ugly strains of vigilantism, urban hooliganism, and gruesome revenge killings by both sides mean that few Israelis and Palestinians can trust one another in the immediate future. In the short-term at least, the barbarism of war and fear have snuffed out the idealism of hope and peace-making. But only in the short term.

Weeks or months from now at most, I am sure, both sides will be furiously negotiating a permanent peace accord. Last week's venomous brutality shows us all the terrifying alternative to peace negotiations; it emphasizes starkly that there is simply no other alternative to quickly separating the Palestinians and Israelis into two adjacent sovereign states with equal rights.

A new negotiating framework will have to be agreed upon which does not suffer the structural flaws of the Oslo process. From the Arab perspective, these flaws are the severe imbalance of power that allows Israel to dictate the pace and nature of peace-making on the basis primarily of whether or not Israel feels it is secure; and, Israel's attempt to make peace with the Palestinians while retaining the fruits of war and predatory colonialism, such as holding on to occupied land, maintaining Israeli settlements in the Palestinian areas, and dictating to the Palestinians the nature of their sovereignty, frontier security controls, use of ports and air space, and other phenomena that would dilute rather than affirm meaningful Palestinian statehood. The Oslo approach has reached a dead end because it has exposed these fatal flaws, and led to greater rather than less Palestinian vulnerability to Israeli political arrogance and superior military force.

Every violent incident since 1993 has led to a brief pause in the negotiations, only to be followed by intense international diplomacy and a faster pace of resumed peace-making. Watching your children die or your parents cower in their homes somehow lights mighty fires beneath would be peace-makers. We can see that diplomatic dynamic underway already, as an unprecedented number of world powers work for a diplomatic breakthrough in this very localized conflict. Threatening force, using military revenge, or forming 'national unity governments' postpones the peace-making imperative briefly, only to hasten it soon after.

To succeed, however, resumed peace talks will have to build on the historic gains and lessons of the Oslo process, eliminate its flaws and disequilibria from both perspectives, and find a new formula that will separate the Palestinians and Israelis into distinct, adjacent sovereign states with equal rights.