Oslo Accords

President Clinton with Yitzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat on the South Lawn, September 13, 1993.

The Oslo Accords were the culmination of a series of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The accords allowed for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, but in return the Palestinians gave up the right of return for "refugees" as well as any hope of reclaiming any Israeli land that they believed they had rights to.

The Declaration of Principles (DOP), also known as the Oslo Accords, were approved in 1993 with Yassir Arafat signing for the Palestine Liberation Organization and Shimon Peres signing for Israel. The accords required Israel to withdraw from parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank and recognize a new Palestinian Authority. More controversial issues concerning Jerusalem, refugees, Israeli settlements and borders were left undecided.

Arafat agreed to revise the Palestine Liberation Organization covenant which had called for “the liquidation of the Zionist presence”. However, in a speech given to the Palestine Legislative Council he justified this step by referring to Muhammad’s Treaty of Hudaybiyah with the Koresh tribe. This peace pact was used by Muhammad to muster enough military strength to conquer the Koresh who would surrender without a single fight.

Extremists on both sides of the Israel-Arab question were not satisfied with the accords. Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Zionist extremist for giving up Judea and Samaria, and Yasser Arafat lost much of his support for recognizing the right of Israel to exist.

Further reading

• Deeb, Dennis J. The Collapse of Middle East Peace: The Rise & Fall of the Oslo Peace Accords (2003) excerpt and text search

Further reading

• Tucker, Spencer C., ed. The Encyclopedia of the Arab-Israeli Conflict A Political, Social, and Military History (4 vol. 2008)

"The Mufti.. concocted a new kind of antisemitism that combined traditional Muslim antisemitism, like the anti-Jewish verses you find in the Koran, with the Nazi antisemitism that demonised Jews... His whole ideology was antisemitic and from the very beginning he targeted Jews, not Zionists."

The difference between lies and reality is sometimes just a color on a map

Lord Peel to W. Ormsby-Gore as he was preparing the royal commission report, "Though I knew there was ill-feeling between Jews and Arabs, I had not realized the depth and intensity of the hatred with which the Jews are held by the Arabs..."

"It is not Israel's settlement blocks but rather the Palestinian ideological blockade that constitutes the biggest barrier to peaceful arrangements . The Jew-hatred in this region must no longer be played down as a kind of local custom ..."

The only tweet (July 2014) on the Twitter account of the late American Elan Ganeles - murdered by Arab-Islamist "Palestinian" on Feb 27, 2023 hy"d: "I think you're always going to have tension in the Middle East, when there's [are] people who want to kill Jews, and the Jews don't want to be killed, and neither side is willing to compromise."