Shimon Peres, who died Wednesday aged 93, strove for peace with the Palestinians with the Oslo accords he helped negotiate more than two decades ago, but his dream is rapidly fading.

The peace process that he helped create is now comatose, with little hope on either side that the deadlock can be broken anytime soon.

It is a sharp contrast with the burst of optimism in the early 1990s.

"We are leaving behind us the era of belligerency and are striding together toward peace," Peres declared in his acceptance speech for the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded for his role in negotiating Oslo.

At the December 10, 1994 Nobel award ceremony, large spectacles dominating his face, foreign minister Peres stood at the rostrum in Oslo.

He was joined by the other joint recipients of the prize: Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

All three wore broad smiles as they received the medals and diplomas "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East" which had crystallised a year earlier when the first Oslo accord was signed in Washington, carrying with it the promise of resolution to the conflict.

But hope has since given way to deep pessimism.

"Twenty-three years ago, almost to the day, the first Oslo accord was signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation," United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon said on September 15.

"Unfortunately, we are further than ever from its goals. The two-state solution is at risk of being replaced by a one-state reality of perpetual violence and occupation."

Ban described the Gaza Strip as a "time bomb".

The 1993 treaty brought the first Palestinian intifada to an end but a second erupted in 2000.

Thousands of people, including women and children, have died in a cycle of Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket attacks as well as Israeli military offensives, punitive operations and "targeted killings" of alleged Palestinian militants.

Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist opposed to Oslo in 1995.

- 'Peace process charade' -

Next year will mark a half-century of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

It has continued despite mutual Israeli-Palestinian recognition, endorsement by the international community of a two-state solution and UN recognition of Palestine as an observer state.

Recognition of Palestinian statehood has come from more than 130 countries.

"Our hand remains outstretched for making peace," Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told the UN General Assembly last week.

"But the question that keeps presenting itself over and over again: Is there any leadership in Israel, the occupying power, that desires to make a true peace and that will abandon the mentality of hegemony, expansionism and colonisation?"

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the world body that the root of the problem is the "persistent Palestinian refusal to recognise the Jewish state."

"When the Palestinians finally say yes to a Jewish state, we will be able to end this conflict once and for all," he said.

The gulf between them is so wide that many diplomats fear that the concept of an Israeli and Palestinian state in peaceful coexistence is slipping away.

Former Abbas advisor Dianna Butu says that Israel clearly has no real plan for peace.

"It's time to drop the charade of the failed, decades-old 'peace process' that has only brought more misery and suffering to Palestinians," she said.

"It's time for the Palestinian leadership to finally embrace large-scale nonviolent popular resistance."

- 'The greatest victory' -

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, recalls the historic handshake between Rabin and Arafat on the White House lawn as a smiling president Bill Clinton looked on.

He said that after Rabin shook hands with his old foe he beckoned Peres forward, saying "Your turn, Shimon."

"The accords are not in good shape but the mutual recognition is still with us," he added, citing security and economic cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli analyst Jonathan Rynhold said that although the Oslo framework is "severely wounded", it is still alive and, at the very least, has fostered a general acceptance by Israelis of the idea of a Palestinian state.

As for the future of the process and the role of Israel's ally the United States, Rynhold says that a victory by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton probably offers the best hope of saving the Oslo accords.

"She's been there from the beginning until now," he said. "There are few people who understand this better."

Israel has won its wars, Peres said in 1994, "but we did not win the greatest victory that we aspired to: release from the need to win victories."