Frontline - Season 20 / Year 2002

FRONTLINE presents how the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that began in Oslo was derailed and ultimately undone by the dynamics of politics and violence on both sides.

Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road From Oslo traces how cautious optimism in the aftermath of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signing the 1993 Oslo Accord was undermined in the following years by violence and major setbacks. It explores the growing threat to the peace process posed by radical nationalist factions among both Jews and Palestinians — groups, including Hamas that opposed all compromise between the two peoples.

The documentary also examines the U.S. role in the peace process, including the U.S.-brokered negotiations in 1998, 2000, and 2001. Shattered Dreams of Peace: The Road From Oslo includes interviews with key figures from both sides of the negotiating table, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Saeb Erekat, and Ehud Barak.

As an FBI agent who specialized in counter-terrorism, John P. O'Neill investigated the bombing of the American embassies in Africa, the USS Cole in Yemen, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, and the first attack on the World Trade Center. O'Neill came to believe America should kill Osama bin Laden before Al Qaeda launched a devastating attack, but his was often a lonely voice. A controversial figure inside the buttoned-down world of the FBI, he was forced out of the job he loved and entered the private sector – as director of security for the World Trade Center.