Oslo Accords

Overview

The Oslo Accords are agreements between Israel and the PLO that established mutual recognition and a framework for Arab self-government in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Their foundation was the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, signed at the White House on September 13, 1993. The principal follow-up agreement, known as Oslo II, was signed in September 1995. Together, the agreements replaced indirect contacts with formal Israel–PLO negotiations and set out a gradual transfer of responsibilities during a five-year interim period.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO negotiator Mahmoud Abbas signed the 1993 declaration. Rabin then shook hands with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat as U.S. President Bill Clinton looked on. Days earlier, the parties had exchanged letters: Arafat recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and security and pledged to renounce terror and violence, while Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Arabs covered by the negotiations. The planned self-government authority would assume civil and internal-security duties in stages, combat terrorism, and coordinate security with Israel.

Oslo established an interim process rather than a permanent peace agreement. Negotiations on Jerusalem, borders, refugees, security arrangements, relations with neighboring states, and other unresolved questions were reserved for later talks. Israel agreed to redeploy forces from Arab population centers, while retaining responsibilities specified in the agreements. By September 2000, the Arab self-government authority had jurisdiction over more than 85 percent of Gaza and 39.7 percent of Judea and Samaria; 99 percent of the Arab population covered by the framework lived under its jurisdiction. The permanent-status process nevertheless failed, and the Oslo process collapsed amid the Second Intifada.

Background

The Egypt–Israel peace treaty had demonstrated that an Arab–Israeli agreement was possible, but Israel and the PLO had no comparable negotiating relationship. On October 30, 1991, the United States and Soviet Union convened the Madrid Conference. It opened bilateral and regional talks involving Israel and Arab parties, including discussions of interim Arab self-rule. Madrid produced no final settlement, but it established a diplomatic setting in which later negotiations could proceed. The Washington negotiating track that followed remained distinct from the secret channel developed in Norway.

After Rabin’s government took office, Norwegian sociologist Terje Larsen and Israeli official Yossi Beilin helped set the Oslo channel in motion in January 1993. Israeli law at the time barred contact with PLO officials, so the first meetings paired two Israeli professors with three PLO representatives. Ahmed Qurei, known as Abu Ala, led the PLO team. The first secret meetings took place near Oslo on January 20–22 at the home of Norwegian minister Jorgen Holst and Marianne Heiberg. Their secrecy allowed participants to test proposals outside the formal Washington talks.

Rabin authorized the channel despite his distrust of Arafat. He conditioned its continuation on preserving the Washington track, keeping the Norwegian meetings secret, and excluding Jerusalem from those talks. As negotiations advanced, Israel sent Foreign Ministry Director General Uri Savir in May 1993, raising the channel to an official level. By August, the negotiations had produced a draft Declaration of Principles. The channel’s emergence made direct Israel–PLO talks possible where Madrid’s initial formula had not provided for them.

Rabin approached Oslo as a matter of national security as well as diplomacy. A former chief of staff who led the Israel Defense Forces during the Six-Day War, he sought a political separation that would preserve Israel as the Jewish people’s national homeland and a democratic state. The prospect of a single binational state shaped his decision to pursue an interim arrangement. His military record and diplomatic policy were parts of the same effort to protect Israel’s future.

On September 9, 1993, Arafat sent Rabin a signed letter committing the PLO to settle disagreements through negotiation and renounce terror and violence. Rabin regarded the letter as evidence that Arafat was prepared to make peace. The original Oslo Accord assigned the United States no formal monitoring role. Washington instead supported the emerging authority, assisted implementation, and helped defuse crises. The September signing also accelerated regional diplomacy: Israel and Jordan initialed a common agenda for peace within 24 hours, before concluding the Israel–Jordan peace treaty in 1994.

Terms

The 1993 Declaration of Principles provided for a five-year interim period in which an Arab self-government authority would assume responsibilities in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Israel accepted the PLO as its negotiating counterpart and undertook phased military redeployments from Arab population centers. The authority was to govern civil affairs and maintain public order where powers had been transferred. Mutual recognition supplied the political basis for these arrangements, while later agreements supplied their administrative and security detail.

The interim structure left the most consequential questions for permanent-status negotiations. Jerusalem, borders, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, relations with neighboring states, and the final disposition of remaining responsibilities were not resolved by the 1993 declaration. Deferring them permitted practical transfers of authority to begin, but also meant that each side entered the process without a settled account of its ultimate outcome. The agreements did not themselves establish a permanent border or conclude the conflict.

The Gaza–Jericho Agreement, signed on May 4, 1994, put the initial transfer into operation. It provided for Israeli redeployment from most of Gaza and from Jericho while defining security and liaison arrangements. Israel retained authority over Gush Katif. The local Arab administration could operate specified sections of the al-Mawasi beach and the Khan Yunis and Rafah fishing wharves. Two Israeli-led joint patrols operated in al-Mawasi, at the wharves, and along the coast road. A District Coordination Office for Khan Yunis had subordinate Joint Liaison Bureaus at the Sufa crossing and Rafah terminal. Such provisions show how the interim framework addressed daily movement and security alongside broader political commitments.

Oslo II, signed by Rabin and Arafat in September 1995, expanded the framework across Judea and Samaria. It divided responsibilities among areas under Arab self-government control, areas with Arab civil administration and Israeli military responsibility, and Area C, which remained under Israeli administrative and security control. The first redeployment phase covered cities, towns, villages, refugee camps, and hamlets before the January 1996 Arab general election. Oslo II then called for three further gradual redeployments of Israeli forces to specified military locations.

Those further phases depended on the Arab police assuming responsibility for public order and internal security. Oslo II fixed no percentage of Judea and Samaria to be transferred in any individual phase. In particular, it did not require a transfer of 30 percent in each further redeployment. The link between redeployment and security responsibility was intended to prevent a gap in public-order enforcement as Israeli forces moved. The authority’s commitments to combat terrorism and coordinate with Israel were therefore central obligations, not incidental provisions.

Oslo II also regulated civil and economic matters. It addressed agriculture, fisheries, electricity, gas, water, sewage, and quarry operations. Article 31 expressly permitted Israel to continue operating existing stone quarries in Area C during the interim period and assigned disputes over them to a joint committee. Article 40 required joint coordination of water and sewage management and allowed development of additional water resources, primarily from the Eastern Aquifer. Ownership of water and sewage resources in Judea and Samaria remained a permanent-status question. For Gaza, a joint regional civil affairs subcommittee coordinated matters between Israel and the Arab authority. These arrangements made resource management a continuing subject of cooperation rather than treating the interim division of powers as a final allocation of ownership.

Implementation

Israel completed its withdrawal from most of Gaza and from Jericho on May 18, 1994. Redeployments beginning that month placed more than 85 percent of Gaza under the jurisdiction of the Arab self-government authority. Arafat returned to Gaza during the process and was elected head of that authority in 1996. Since December 1995, it has handled Bethlehem’s civil affairs, internal security, and public order. The agreements thus changed who governed large Arab population centers even though final-status negotiations remained unfinished.

Implementation proceeded amid opposition and violence. In January 1994, Shikaki helped organize an alliance of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and eight PLO groups opposed to Oslo. Hamas is a terrorist organization; it and other armed groups attacked Israeli civilians during the interim period. The Fatah-led PLO’s participation in negotiations did not erase Fatah’s earlier attacks on civilians or ensure consistent adherence to peaceful politics. Nor did opposition to Oslo follow a single course: Israelis debated its terms and security consequences, while some opponents used threats and violent imagery against Rabin.

Rabin attended a rally supporting the accords at Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995. Yigal Amir, who opposed Oslo on religious grounds, assassinated him after the rally. Some anti-Oslo demonstrators had displayed images of Rabin in an SS uniform or in a sniper’s crosshairs. Such intimidation crossed the boundary of legitimate debate, but criticism of the agreements itself did not constitute responsibility for Amir’s murder. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who had shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Arafat, continued implementing Oslo after Rabin’s death.

Hamas carried out a series of attacks after the assassination, further damaging confidence in the process and weakening support for Israel’s Labor Party before the May 1996 election. Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister after that election. The change of government did not end all implementation. A delay in redeployment from Hebron had already disrupted the original schedule, and the Hebron Protocol resolved that redeployment in January 1997. It required Israeli military redeployment in the city within ten days of signing and established a Joint Coordination Center at Har Manoah. Oslo arrangements and the Hebron Protocol also committed the parties to respect arrangements for shared worship at the Cave of the Patriarchs.

The original schedule had placed completion of three further redeployments by the end of 1997. After the Hebron arrangement, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher set out a revised timetable calling for the last by mid-1998. In March 1997, the Arab authority rejected Israel’s proposed first further redeployment under that timetable as insufficient. The disagreement concerned its scope, for which Oslo II specified no fixed territorial percentage, as well as the security responsibilities tied to implementation. The October 1998 Wye River Memorandum was another interim attempt to advance redeployment and security commitments.

By September 2000, the transfers had given the Arab authority jurisdiction over most of Gaza and over substantial parts of Judea and Samaria. Those figures describe the reach of interim self-government, not completion of the promised permanent settlement. The authority’s jurisdiction over 99 percent of the Arab population covered by the framework coexisted with continuing Israeli administrative and security control in Area C. Oslo’s territorial distinctions and liaison arrangements consequently remained consequential after the original five-year timetable had passed.

Significance

Oslo’s principal diplomatic change was mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. Its principal institutional change was the creation of an Arab authority exercising civil and internal-security powers in much of Gaza and Judea and Samaria. The accords opened a direct negotiating relationship and gave practical form to interim self-government. They followed the Egypt–Israel peace treaty and helped create momentum for the Israel–Jordan peace treaty, but did not settle the questions reserved for permanent-status talks.

Public responses changed over time. Polling recorded 72 percent support among Arabs covered by the process for Oslo II in 1995. In a 2018 poll, 47 percent of Arab respondents judged the accords harmful to their national interests, while 34 percent said they had made no difference. The contrast reflects the distance between the early expectation of a negotiated settlement and the later record of failed permanent-status talks, attacks, and prolonged interim administration.

Rabin acknowledged in February 1995 that negotiations with Arafat might fail to produce a permanent agreement. The July 2000 Camp David talks did not produce one, and violence intensified during the Second Intifada later that year. Negotiating rounds spanning 1991–2001, 2007–2008, and 2013–2014 also failed to produce a mutual agreement ending the conflict. Oslo therefore remains both a historic diplomatic breakthrough and an unfinished framework: its transfers of authority and division of responsibilities had lasting effects, while the peace it was intended to facilitate was never concluded.