The Oslo peace process was a period of great hope and perhaps even bigger frustrations for all parties involved in the Israeli–Arab conflict, including for the EC/EU. Six major and several minor agreements were signed between Israel and the PLO during the Oslo peace process of the 1990s: the 1993 Declaration of Principles (DoP), the 1994 Gaza–Jericho Agreement, the 1995 Oslo II Agreement, the 1997 Hebron Protocol, the 1998 Wye River Agreement and the 1999 Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum. In retrospect, it is clear that these were not real peace agreements: rather, they were agreements of intent, interim agreements or agreements on implementing previous agreements, on the way to a full-scale agreement. This however, did not stop the EC and later the EU from describing some of them, at the time when they were signed, as more than they were, or at least came to be. While the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was always at the heart of the Oslo peace process, it is almost forgotten today that the peace process of the 1990s also had a Jordanian, a Syrian, a Lebanese, and a multilateral track, of which only the Jordanian was successful. From the beginning of the peace process, the EC emphasized ‘the need for interregional cooperation to help make the peace process irreversible’ (Bulletin of the EC 9-1993: 57). The Commission also underlined the need for outside third parties to support the peace process, ‘particularly the Community, which could have a major role to play because of its geopolitical situation, its close links with all the parties concerned and its own experience of regional cooperation’ (Bulletin of the EC 9-1993: 58). The spirit of the time was indeed regional cooperation in what was often at the time referred to as ‘the new Middle East’.