The Oslo Accords, the first direct agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, emerged from secret negotiations after the 1991 Madrid Middle East Peace Conference; established the self-governing Palestinian Authority for parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip; staggered after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995; and collapsed as a pathway to peace when the Second Intifada broke out in 2000.
Jan. 31, 2023 In this 48-minute webinar recorded Jan. 31, 2023, two experts on Jordan, the Washington Institute’s Ghaith al-Omari and Tel Aviv University’s Asher Susser, help CIE President Ken Stein explore more than a…
On September 9, 1993, four days before Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords on the White House Lawn, Israel and the PLO signed mutual recognition Letters. Joel Singer, who significantly assisted the negotiation of both the MRA and the Oslo Accords, as well as earlier agreements with Egypt, recalled that the MRA was “a massive leap forward in Israeli-Palestinian relations.”
Negotiated through the Norwegians, the Oslo Accords call for limited Palestinian rule in some of the territories but do not call for a Palestinian state or an end to settlements.
Jordan becomes the second Arab country after Egypt (1979) to sign a peace treaty ending the state of war with Israel. The Treaty addresses boundary demarcations, water sharing, police and security cooperation, environmental issues, border crossings, administration of Muslim holy sites and other issues.
In September 2023, thirty years after the historic signing of the Oslo Accords, there is occasion to review Prime Minister Rabin’s understanding of them. I assembled this collection years ago from Daily Reports- Near East and South Asia, 1993-1995. Two short items about Rabin’s views are also found or linked here. Rabin provided a summary of his views of the Accords in a Knesset speech in October 5, 1995. Some of Rabin’s reasons for signing the Accords are also provided in Yehuda Avner’s The Prime Ministers.
Kenneth W. Stein, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol. XX, 1996, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Westview Press, pp. 34-65. Of all the events in 1996, the 29 May Israeli general elections had the…
Kenneth W. Stein, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol. XXI, 1997, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Westview Press, pp. 71-109. On a macro level, in 1997, Israel and much of the Arab world spent…
Kenneth W. Stein, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol. XXII, 1998, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Westview Press, pp. 56-89. For almost all of 1998, the Arab-Israeli peace process was analogous to a driver…
Kenneth W. Stein, “The Arab-Israeli Peace Process,” Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol. XXIII, 2000, Bruce Maddy-Weitzman (ed.), Westview Press, pp. 48-76. For some aspects of Arab-Israeli relations and negotiations, the beginning and end of 1999…
