The Oslo Peace Process, 1993–2000

Abstract

On September 13, 1993, the PLO and Israel signed the Declaration of Principles (Oslo I) and committed themselves to a phased framework for negotiations. The following May, negotiators finalized the Cairo Agreement. According to its terms, the Israeli army withdrew from Gaza and Jericho and transferred control over those areas to a new Palestinian self-governing apparatus, the Palestinian Authority (PA). In September 1995, the Taba Agreement (Oslo II) mandated Israel’s redeployment from Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. It divided that territory into Areas A, under full PA oversight; Areas B, in which security matters were under joint Palestinian–Israeli control; and Areas C, where security matters were under full Israeli control. Israel and the PLO pledged to commence permanent status talks on the issues of Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, water, and borders no later than May 1996. Talks were to conclude in a final peace settlement by May 1999. These deadlines were missed, as were dozens of others from September 1993 to September 2000. Rather than delivering a resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Oslo process produced both historic breakthroughs and acts of bad faith. Israel transferred about 60 percent of the Gaza Strip and 17 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian self-rule. Yet it also imposed new restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement, confiscated tens of thousands of acres for settlement expansion, doubled its settler population by the year 2000, and paved approximately 250 miles of bypass roads for exclusive Israeli use in the territories. It carried out interim withdrawals in a limited and unilateral way, continuously fueling Palestinian fears that Oslo was a vehicle for denying them sovereignty more than granting it. The PLO recognized Israel and coordinated security, economic, and other matters with its former enemy on a nearly daily basis. Yet Palestinians also carried out acts of violence that claimed more Israeli lives during the six-year period after the Oslo Agreement than before it. The number of Palestinians killed by Israelis was greater. Never since 1948, however, had the death tolls of the two communities so closely approximated each other (see Figure 4.1).