Vince Musi/The White HouseYitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shake hands as President Bill Clinton looks on during the Oslo Accords signing ceremony on Sept. 13, 1993.Historic Headlines
Learn about key events in history and their connections to today.
On Sept. 13, 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman, Yasser Arafat, shook hands in a public ceremony at the White House after signing an agreement that granted limited autonomy to Palestine and laid the foundation for future peace talks.
Thomas Friedman wrote in the Sept. 13 New York Times, “Two hands that had written the battle orders for so many young men, two fists that had been raised in anger at one another so many times in the past, locked together for a fleeting moment of reconciliation. But much difficult work, many more compromises, will now have to be performed by these same two men to make it a lasting moment.”
The agreement, officially called the “Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements” but better known as the Oslo Accords, called for Israeli forces
to withdraw from parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which would come under the control of a Palestinian government. The agreement was intended to be temporary, with permanent solutions to be negotiated over
the following five years.
Arafat, Rabin and the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for their work. Rabin was assassinated by a far right-wing Zionist for his support of the Oslo Accords in November 1995, just a month and a half after signing a more concrete agreement to cede the West Bank to Palestinian control.
Connect to Today:
Though the Oslo Accords were a promising development in Israeli-Palestinian relations, they have not led to a lasting peace. Eighteen years later, there is still violence in Gaza along with disputes over control of sections of the West Bank.
The Times Topic pages on the Palestinian Authority, West Bank and the Gaza Strip provide overviews of the conflict and article archives that trace the evolution of the conflict.
Given the number of agreements that have been reached and subsequently violated over the decades, what do you think it will take for Israel and Palestine to reach a permanent peace agreement? Why? What role, if any, do you believe the United States or other nations should play in brokering peace in the Middle East?
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