The Oslo Accords sought to separate Israelis and Palestinians, in the name of an eventual Peace. However, in the face of economic dependence and territorial integration, much of the coercion and perceived injustice of the conflict has been produced through these very attempts at separation. Oslo should be understood as part of a longer historical process that has attempted to distinguish between Israeli and Palestinian, and in doing so created an unequal and contradictory distribution of legal rights. In this way violence was contained in the historical logic of the peace process. While Oslo has seemingly collapsed into the violence of the second intifada, it has left an institutional and political legacy that continues to shape the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. In the continuing attempts to separate Israelis and Palestinians, full rights of accountability and participation have been reserved for Israeli citizens. Those left outside the protection of Israeli citizenship have been ruled though a mixture of military rule and partial, if extremely limited, autonomy under the increasingly autocratic PNA. In this context, the relative rights and entitlements provided to Israelis and Palestinians are central to the life chances of the people who live and work in the West Bank. However, rather than being granted once and for all, legal status and its attendant rights are produced in an ongoing conflict between the Israeli state, the Palestinian national movement and the people who live in the region.