Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Saka.

My guest today perhaps take some grim satisfaction from the fact that his political pessimism

some three decades ago has proven well justified.

Back then, the Palestinian physician, politician and civil rights activist Mustafa Barguti

condemned the secretive Oslo peace deal between the

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Israeli government led by Yitzhak Rabin as a mistake and a betrayal

of Palestinian aspirations. And sure enough, over the following years, the high hopes for Oslo

that it would lead to a lasting two-state solution have been dashed.

The Palestinians, post-Arafat, have been left with a Palestinian authority which has lost

any claim to democratic legitimacy, long ago ceded control of Gaza to the Islamists of Hamas,

and has failed to stop Israel massively expanding its settlement program in the

occupied West Bank. As of last year, Israel has the most right-wing, hawkish government in its history,

while the Palestinian Authority is led by 87-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, whose main focus seems to be

on trying to maintain his fragile grip on his office.

There are signs that many young Palestinians in the West Bank now see a return to armed struggle

as their only option. Decades of hostility and sporadic violence could morph into something

much worse. Does Mustafa Barguti, who talks the language of civil resistance, not armed conflict,

have concrete ideas that stand a chance of improving his people's situation. Well, he joins me now

from Ramallah. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you. Nice to be with you. Good to have you on the show. Let's

start with the situation in the West Bank where you sit in Ramallah.

Is there any semblance of political authority or control in the West Bank right now?

Unfortunately, the existing authority is the acute authority of occupation, Israeli military

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