Three decades after a historic handshake on the White House lawn that capped months of secret Israeli-Palestinian talks, disillusioned young Gazans face the consquences and failed promises of the once-celebrated Oslo Accords. The agreements inked in the early 1990s were meant to lead to an independent Palestinian state, but years of stalled negotiations and bloody violence have left any peaceful resolution of the ongoing conflict a distant dream. In the blockaded Gaza Strip, “the Oslo Accords… destroyed our dreams, future and ambitions,” said 20-year-old student Iman Hassouna. She was not born when Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat returned to Gaza from exile months after the September 13, 1993 signing ceremony in Washington. The interim accords granted the nascent Palestinian Authority some level of self-government but never expanded into a lasting solution, which “has had a negative effect on the future of my generation”, according to 22-year-old Adham Abdullah. Fellow student Ahmed al-Abadila, 20, said what remains of the accords is “nothing but ink on paper”. Mustafa al-Sununu arrived in Gaza alongside Arafat in July 1994 and was subsequently named captain of the Palestinian presidential guard. “We thought the country would become like Singapore: open roads, work opportunities for our children, a government, an airport, a port and a passport”, Sununu, now 47, told AFP. “We thought the state was within reach.”