Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) reached the two interim deals known as the Oslo Accords: the first was signed in Washington on 13 September 1993 and the second concluded at Taba in Egypt in 1995. Prepared in secret talks hosted by Norway, they brought the two sides to recognise one another for the first time and created the Palestinian Authority to run limited self-government in parts of the West Bank and Gaza. They were meant to lead within five years to a permanent settlement, which was never reached.
Background
Israel had held the West Bank and Gaza since the Six-Day War of 1967. The Camp David Accords of 1978 had sketched a form of Palestinian autonomy, but Israel then regarded the PLO as a terrorist organisation and would not deal with it, preferring to negotiate through Egypt, Jordan and local representatives. The Oslo talks broke with this by putting Israeli and PLO negotiators in direct contact.
Secret talks and mutual recognition
The discussions began unofficially in Norway, facilitated by Terje Rød-Larsen, Mona Juul and the deputy foreign minister Jan Egeland, who provided cover and funding. In letters exchanged on 9 September 1993 the PLO recognised the State of Israel, and Israel recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Four days later the Declaration of Principles, known as Oslo I, was signed at the White House, where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands in the presence of President Bill Clinton.
What the agreements provided
Oslo I set out a five-year interim period. Israel would first withdraw from Gaza and Jericho, and permanent-status talks on the hardest questions, namely Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements and borders, were to start no later than the third year. The Gaza–Jericho Agreement of May 1994 established the Palestinian Authority. Oslo II in 1995 divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C with differing degrees of Palestinian and Israeli control, provided for an elected Palestinian council and planned further Israeli redeployments. Israel kept control of external borders, airspace and settlements. The agreements did not create a Palestinian state or define the borders of one.
Violence and opposition
The process faced strong opposition on both sides. Less than six months after the signing, an Israeli extremist killed 29 Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Hamas responded with its first lethal suicide bombings; part of a campaign of attacks that year aimed at derailing the process. Many Palestinians rejected the terms, and the scholar Edward Said called them a "Palestinian Versailles". On the Israeli right the accords were bitterly opposed, and in 1995 Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist. Rabin, Arafat and Shimon Peres had shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Stalemate
The first Palestinian Legislative Council elections were held on 20 January 1996. After Benjamin Netanyahu, an opponent of the accords, won the Israeli election that year, redeployments slowed; Israel withdrew from most of Hebron in January 1997, and the Wye River Memorandum of 1998 was only partly carried out. The interim period expired on 4 May 1999 without a final agreement. Meanwhile the settler population in the West Bank and Gaza, excluding East Jerusalem, grew from about 115,700 to 203,000 between 1993 and 2000. The failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the outbreak of the Second Intifada are generally taken as the end of the Oslo process.
Legacy
The Palestinian Authority and the division of the West Bank into three areas outlived the process that created them; Area C, about 60 per cent of the West Bank, remains under full Israeli control. Most scholarly assessments are critical, pointing to the imbalance of power between the parties and the postponement of every core issue, while some defenders, such as Dennis Ross and David Makovsky writing in 2023, point to the lasting cooperation on security and economic matters between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
On our maps
From the atlas
Oslo Accords in time and on the map
Oslo Accords took place in 1993. The nearest maps from before and after are 1985 and 1994; compare them side by side.
Living through it, among others on this site: Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006), Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997), Desmond Tutu (1931–2021), Elizabeth II (1926–2022), Fidel Castro (1926–2016), Hafez al-Assad (1930–2000), Idi Amin (1925–2003), John Rawls (1921–2002), Julius Nyerere (1922–1999) and Karl Popper (1902–1994).
Other events of the same years: Satsuma Rebellion (1877–2005), Nahda (1900–2000), The Troubles (1960–1998), Guatemalan Civil War (1965–1996), Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), Human Genome Project (1990–2003), End of apartheid (1990–1994), Rwandan Civil War (1990–1993), Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001) and Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002).
Next to it in time on this site: before, Dissolution of Czechoslovakia (1992) and Maastricht Treaty (1992); after, First Chechen War (1994–1996) and Rwandan genocide (1994).
Quick answers
- When did the Oslo Accords happen?
- In 1993.
- Where did the Oslo Accords take place?
- Oslo and Norway.
- How did the map change?
- Compare the atlas’s maps of 1985 and 1994 side by side.