LONDON: Exactly 33 years ago today, on Sept. 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, stood on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington and shook hands for the cameras in front of a beaming US President Bill Clinton.
The historic handshake celebrated the signing of an agreement, the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, which would become known as the Oslo 1 Accord.
At the time, the agreement appeared to hold out such promise for a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict that the following year the two leaders, together with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, shared the Nobel Peace Prize.
To some, the awarding of the prize seemed premature, as Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, acknowledged in his speech during the award ceremony at Norway’s Oslo City Hall on Dec. 10, 1994.
“It has been said that the Nobel Committee ought to have waited,” he said.
But that, he added, was “to disregard what has already been achieved as a result of the Oslo Accords … Besides, if we had to wait for … perpetual peace, we might have to wait a long time.”
Within less than 11 months of receiving his Nobel Prize, Rabin was dead, assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist. In effect, Oslo 1, and the prospect of a final-status settlement it augured, died with him.
Oslo 1 — so-called because the agreement was the product of a series of secret meetings between negotiators in Norway — did break new ground, says Shira Efron, distinguished chair for Israel policy at global think tank RAND.
“Oslo’s key achievements were a mutual recognition, with Israel recognizing the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and the PLO recognizing Israel’s right to exist; the normalization of Israeli-Palestinian direct contact, and the creation of the Palestinian Authority as a governing body,” she said.
“These have lasted for over three decades, with the recognition and direct contact remaining the bedrock on which every subsequent negotiation was built, even as each failed in turn.
“The Palestinian Authority itself, however dysfunctional, is Oslo’s most durable institutional legacy, which provides for a framework of Palestinian self-rule in Areas A and B that did not exist before 1993.”
But the accord’s most consequential failure, she said, was that “it was an interim agreement that never named an endpoint. Israel never committed to Palestinian statehood as the outcome.”
Oslo 1 set out a five-year transitional period, designed to build confidence and bridge the gap between the start of limited Palestinian self-government and a final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.
“But there was no enforcement mechanism to hold either side to its commitments, and no external monitor willing to impose costs on both sides for violations,” said Efron.
“Not a single deadline was met, and the vacuum was filled by settlement expansion on one side and terrorism on the other, and currently terrorism on both sides with Jewish attacks on Palestinians that now for the first time far surpass Palestinian violence.
“The interim status quo became the permanent condition.”
Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, agrees that Oslo “failed in laying the groundwork for an independent Palestine.”
But Abrams, who served in various foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, believes that “while Israel is often blamed for this, that is wrong and unfair.”
“The real reason for the failure is the refusal of Palestinians to accept the permanent reality of a Jewish state.”
Oslo, he added, “was built on a rotten pedestal by elevating Yasser Arafat, a man who was against creating a Palestinian democracy, indifferent to building a prosperous state, corrupt, and a terrorist.
“He left behind a shambles that exists still today, with the Palestinian Authority unable to govern Gaza and deeply hated by the majority of Palestinians.”
According to a survey carried out in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip last month by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, “a striking 83 percent believe corruption exists within Palestinian Authority institutions, and 65 percent now describe the PA as a burden rather than an achievement.”
The Oslo Accord failed to resolve the core issues at the heart of the conflict, including borders, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and security arrangements. All these thorny issues were deferred to later “permanent status” talks that were supposed to conclude within five years.
“Oslo relied heavily on gradualism, postponed the most difficult questions and contained few effective safeguards against actions that could alter conditions on the ground before final status negotiations were completed,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.
“Those weaknesses became increasingly important as settlement expansion continued, violence damaged political confidence and leadership changes reduced the willingness of both sides to accept the risks associated with compromise.”
Subsequent Israeli policies, she added, “deserve particular weight in explaining the erosion of the process, especially where governments expanded settlements or explicitly opposed Palestinian statehood.”
However, “describing the entire period as the systematic sabotage of Oslo by successive Israeli governments obscures significant differences between governments and understates Palestinian political decisions, including the use of violence and failures of governance.”
