The Oslo Accords classified the Final Status Negotiations issues into: Jerusalem, Security and Refugees, Land, Borders, and Water. Since the Madrid Conference discussions related to water are practically the only dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians due to its intrinsic essence for daily life. Palestinians have had to negotiate every detail including technical information flow from Palestinians to Israelis through the Joint Water Committee and the relevant technical committees.

In the dawn of direct negotiations, despite reservations on the conditions under which the negotiations will be initiated of fragmented Palestinian positions, the general atmosphere will fall under a different context than that of Oslo due to the presence of Palestinian institutions that should have the ability to build a strategy from its experience under more than a decade of previous agreements. The Palestinian starting point in negotiations should not be from assessing intentions but from defining a strategy that is binding and testing the extent of seriousness of the counterpart. In other words the starting point is that we negotiate what we want not what is offered.

From here, we believe that negotiations be held within the following framework: