Introduction
At the end of 2010, seventeen years after Israel and the PLO signed the Declaration of Principles, and eleven years after the Final Status Negotiations should have been concluded, the negotiations between the parties seem to have come to a standstill.
No progress whatsoever has been made, and the situation on the ground has worsened. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held talks with the American special envoy George Mitchell, who acted as an intermediary. However, mediatory efforts led to nothing, and on 13 May 2011, Mitchell resigned as special envoy.