Sources
- ”Oslo Accords” Wikipedia. Accessed April 27th, 2024.
- ”Arafat’s Johannesburg Speech” Information Regarding Israel’s Security. Accessed April 27th, 2024.
- Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. Cary: Oxford University Press USA - OSO, 2007.
Parties
| Agreement Type | Bilateral negotiations |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations |
| Date | September 13th, 1993 |
| Location | Washington, D.C. United States (Oslo I) |
| Signatories | Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat |
| Parties | Israel, PLO, Norway (mediator) |
Location
- Negotiations occurred in secret in Oslo, Norway, with the first agreements being signed in Washington D.C., concerning Israel and Palestine.
Causes
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 164)
Very few in the Arab world had much love for Arafat or for the PLO, ‘the cancer in our midst’, as King Hassan of Morocco defined it in his December meeting with Dayan and Tuhami. Years later this author would personally hear from the King, in his meeting with him in his Rabat palace in January 1993, similar harsh descriptions of Arafat and the PLO, an organisation he then confided to me had outlived its historical role and was becoming an obstacle to peace that needed to be dismantled. The King also related to me the advice he had given to Arafat’s deputy, Abu-Mazen, that the PLO should disband and allow the local Palestinian leadership in the territories to assume the responsibility for dealing directly with Israel. When I later reported my conversation with the King to Prime Minister Rabin he could not conceal his embarrassment, for it was precisely at that time that an Israeli team was negotiating in Oslo with a PLO delegation what later became known as the Oslo accords.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 219)
Paradoxically, Assad was indirectly responsible for the Oslo agreement. It was the failure of his Syrian enterprise that brought Rabin to the White House lawn in Washington for his historic handshake with Arafat. It was precisely when the Oslo agreement was almost ready in early August 1993 that Rabin made his last and most dramatic attempt to stick to the capsule theory and to reach a deal with Assad. He conveyed to him a hypothetical readiness to accept Syria’s territorial claims if Syria would in turn accept Israel’s demands on security and normalisation. Assad’s disheartening response–he utterly rejected Israel’s concept of ‘normalisation’, and insisted on symmetrical and reciprocal security arrangements that would also affect the Israeli side of the new border–prompted Rabin to give the green light to the completion of the Oslo accords later that month. Israel’s chief negotiator with Assad’s men, Itamar Rabinovich, later recalled how Rabin expounded his rationale to Secretary of State Warren Christopher: ‘If Assad were to come forward and an Israeli–Syrian deal were to be made, then this would be supplemented by a small Palestinian deal. If Assad’s response is disappointing, there would be no Israeli–Syrian breakthrough, so then there would be a major Israeli–Palestinian agreement.’
Facts
- Israel and the PLO reached a mutual peaceful agreement
- This called for the withdrawal of the IDF from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank
- Remaining issues needed to be settled, including Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, Israeli settlements, security and borders.
- Letters of Mutual Recognition between the Israeli Government and the PLO were signed.
- Israel recognized the PLO as the governing body of the Palestinians, the PLO renounced terrorism and other violence and its desire for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Outcome
- Reactions
- In the Knesset a strong debate emerged between the left and right wing over support for the Oslo accords.
- Fatah, the Palestinians present at the negotiations, accepted the accords, but Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), all objected to the accords.
- Israelis were nervous that this peace process would simply be a part of the PLO’s Ten Point Program, which essentially calls for escalating steps until all of historic Palestine is liberated from Israel.
- Palestinians feared that Israel was not serious about dismantling their settlements in the West Bank, especially around Jerusalem.
- The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.
- Netanyahu, in a secret recording, claims that his plan was to define “specified military locations” in the broadest possible sense according to the Oslo Accords, which could theoretically encompass the entirety of the Jordan Valley.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 216)
Israel’s annexationist policies further undermined Arafat’s legitimacy for making concessions and reinforced his instinct that he could not be seen as openly collaborating with the Israelis in fighting terrorism. This, in its turn, limited Rabin’s capacity to move forward in the process. Caught between the terror of the fundamentalists, Arafat’s passivity, and the inevitable ascendancy of the peace sceptics and the Israeli far right, Rabin was marching to his political demise. The frivolous oxymoron coined by Peres that the Israelis killed in terrorist attacks–between 1993 and 1996 about 300 Israelis were assassinated by suicide squads–were the ‘victims of peace’ was utterly rejected by the public. Terrorism undermined the legitimacy and the moral foundations of the peace process. Neither Arafat nor Rabin was now in a position to give the other the minimum required to keep Oslo alive. When Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish fanatic as a traitor who sold out Eretz-Israel, he was already severely crippled politically by a series of devastating suicide terrorist attacks, notably in Tel Aviv and Beit Lid, and by Arafat’s failure to face the enemies of peace in his own camp.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 220)
The hysteria in Jordan was such that the moment he knew of the Oslo accord, the King ordered the closure of the bridges linking the West and the East Banks for fear of a mass exodus of Palestinians that would end up subverting the Jordanian state. The May 1994 Israeli–PLO economic agreement was an additional threat to Hussein, who now saw his kingdom’s economic ties with the West Bank seriously undermined. To the King a common Israeli–Palestinian economic space meant unemployment and political instability in Jordan.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 221)
Arafat’s handshake with Rabin was the alibi and legitimisation that Hussein had been looking for ever since he ascended the throne, in order openly to pursue the legacy of his grandfather’s peace policy with Israel. Now it was no longer the Jordanian option at the expense of the Palestinians, as both Israel and Jordan wanted it in the past, but a desperate rush to save Jordan’s interests and perhaps its very existence as an independent Bedouin kingdom, at a moment when the Palestinian option was picked up by Israel. It became vital for Hussein to make peace with Israel if he wanted to make sure that his nemesis, Arafat, would not have an exclusive say about the future of Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 221)
It is an interesting reflection on the nature of the peace process as it developed in the Rabin years that, notwithstanding the high degree of commitment of the Clinton administration to the process, whatever was achieved–Oslo and the peace with Jordan–was done bilaterally with very little, if any, American involvement. The Americans were throughout sceptical that Hussein would dare to depart from his traditional policy of sitting on the fence. They did not realise how imperative the Oslo agreement made Jordan’s necessity to reach a settlement with Israel. Clearly, however, a much needed debt relief that the Clinton administration offered as a lure to the King if he made peace with Israel was a crucially important bonus that Hussein could not afford the luxury of ignoring.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 222)
Netanyahu stalled the peace process with the Palestinians, exhibited an indifferent attitude towards Jordan’s economic expectations and even irresponsibly humiliated the King by taking the liberty of allowing an attempt–abortive, as it turned out–by the Mossad against the life of a Hamas leader, Khaled Mashal, in Amman in broad daylight.
Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy. (p. 234)
Probably one of the deficiencies of the Oslo accord–at the same time the reason for its initial success–was that it started as an agreement on the lowest common denominator possible in Israeli society: the idea of getting rid of Gaza did not entail any national trauma.