OSLO AGREEMENT
OSLO AGREEMENT by Ronen Steinberg
The Oslo Accords are a series of agreements between the Israeli government and the leadership of the PLO. These agreements came out of secret, informal talks between mid-level Israeli and PLO officials, which were held in 1993 in Oslo, under the auspices of the Norwegian government. At the heart of these agreements was the creation of an interim self-government, called the Palestinian Authority, which was to gradually assume control over large parts of the Palestinian population, in return for recognition by the State of Israel and the cessation of violence in the national struggle. On September 13, 1993, Yasser Arafat, the leader of the PLO, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, signed a Declaration of Principles in Washington, under the patronage of President Bill Clinton.
The conventional narrative surrounding the Oslo Accords is one of hope and disillusionment. Initially, the agreements inaugurated a period of tremendous enthusiasm: opinion polls consistently showed that 65-75% of Palestinians and Israelis were in favor of a negotiated settlement. Rabin, Arafat and the Israeli Foreign Minister at the time, Shimon Peres, received the Nobel Peace Prize. There was much talk of a “new Middle East.” Yet within a few years all was in shambles: Rabin was assassinated by a zealot Jew in 1995, radical Islamist organizations in the Palestinian territories unleashed a particularly fatal wave of attacks against Israelis, the Palestinians continued to suffer under Israeli occupation, and their quality of life improved little. The outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in 2001-2 drove the last nails into the coffin of the Oslo dream.
Yet it is important to note that there were significant voices of opposition to the Oslo Accords from the start. Some within the PLO pointed out that the Palestinians were surrendering 90% of their historic land, and this was unacceptable. Others criticized the agreement for failing to deal with the main issues on the Palestinian agenda: the status of their future state, the question of East Jerusalem, the fate of the Jewish settlements, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Notable Palestinian intellectuals argued that the agreement actually solidified the Israeli occupation. There was also fierce resistance to any negotiations with Israel on the part of Islamist movements, who challenged the legitimacy of the PLO to represent the Palestinian people. Within Israel, opposition to the accords came mainly from the political right, who opposed the idea of territorial concessions in return for peace, and argued that the PLO was not a viable partner for negotiations, and that the agreement left Israel vulnerable to Arab aggression. Some in the radical left in Israel also criticized the agreement for failing to end the Israeli occupation and to create a more just socio-economic order in the region. These criticisms of the Oslo Accords constitute many of the accusations which Palestinians and Israelis still hurl at each other today for this failure to achieve peace.
Ronen Steinberg, Historian, University of Chicago.
