Oslo I – the Declaration of Principles

The challenge

The Washington talks that opened after the Madrid Conference were deadlocked by 1993¹. Israel and the PLO still did not recognise each other².

Israel sought security and recognition of its right to exist; the PLO sought recognition as the representative of the Palestinian people and a start to ending Israeli control of the territories. The first attempt to bridge that gap was the letters of mutual recognition².

The road there

1. 1992Towards the end of the year Terje Rød-Larsen, head of the Norwegian research institute Fafo, proposes a secret channel; the Norwegian foreign ministry backs it³.
2. January 1993Talks open in Norway. On the Israeli side: the academics Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak; for the PLO: Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) and Hassan Asfour³.
3. May 1993A first draft is shown to the Israeli leadership. The talks become official, and Uri Savir and Joel Singer join them³.
4. August 1993The Declaration is initialled in Oslo³.
5. 9 September 1993Letters of mutual recognition between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin².
6. 13 September 1993The signing ceremony in Washington⁴.

The people

Led

Yitzhak Rabin · Yasser Arafat

Negotiated

Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) · Yair Hirschfeld · Ron Pundak · Uri Savir · Joel Singer

Signed

Shimon Peres · Mahmoud Abbas

Mediated

Terje Rød-Larsen · Mona Juul · Johan Jørgen Holst

Witnessed

Warren Christopher

Hosted

Bill Clinton

What was agreed

• An interim period of no more than five years, beginning with Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area⁴.
• The Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and Jericho is to be completed within four months of signing the detailed agreement on it⁴.
• A Palestinian Council is to be chosen in direct, free and general elections, under agreed supervision and international observation, no later than nine months after the Declaration enters into force⁴.
• Permanent-status negotiations are to begin no later than the start of the third year of the interim period⁴.
• The issues deferred to permanent status: Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbours⁴.
• The Declaration entered into force one month after signing⁴.

Read the document

The geography

The hard decisions

• Who signed and who shook hands: the document was signed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres for Israel and by Mahmoud Abbas for the PLO; the witnesses were US Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev⁴. Rabin and Arafat, who led the move, took part in the ceremony hosted by President Bill Clinton and shook hands, but did not sign the Declaration.
• The process was run in secret, in Norway, and bypassed the official talks in Washington¹³.
• Opposition was fierce on both sides. In Israel, the follow-up agreement passed the Knesset in 1995 by a narrow 61 votes to 59⁵. On the Palestinian side, Hamas rejected the negotiations and boycotted the 1996 elections⁶.
• Violence accompanied the process: on 25 February 1994 worshippers were massacred at the mosque in Hebron and the talks stopped⁷; in February–March 1996 59 people were killed in Israel in four Hamas suicide bombings, most of them on buses and at a shopping centre⁸.

What changed in real life

• For the first time a Palestinian governing body was set up in Gaza and Jericho, and later in the West Bank cities⁹¹².

What remains open

• This is not a final peace treaty between two states. The Declaration was signed between the State of Israel and an organisation representing a people; it creates no Palestinian state, fixes no border and declares no end to the conflict. The core issues — Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements and borders — were explicitly deferred to permanent-status negotiations⁴.
• The Palestinian scholar Khalil Shikaki argued in 2001 that the problem lay in the structure itself: an open-ended agreement during which settlement construction continued¹³.
• The attempt to reach a permanent-status agreement at the Camp David summit in July 2000 ended without one¹⁰.

Photos, videos and quotes

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Related archive photograph, not a video frame · Vince Musi / The White House – William J. Clinton Presidential Library, National Archives (NAID 1985480)

10 December 1994 Iconic moment

Various - Arafat, Peres and Rabin Receive Nobel

Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, 10 December 1994 – archive footage. The description rests on the video title.

The prize was awarded to the three jointly for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East, following the Oslo accord. The decision was contested even then, and the Oslo process never matured into a permanent agreement.

AP Archive · Opens on the source site in a new tab

▶Watch here

Click to load the YouTube player, or open the source.

Related archive photograph, not a video frame · Vince Musi / The White House – William J. Clinton Presidential Library, National Archives (NAID 1985480)

13 September 1993 Iconic momentNot from an official or archival channel

Signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles (1993)

Signing ceremony of the Israel–PLO Declaration of Principles, the White House, 13 September 1993 – Clinton Presidential Library channel

clintonlibrary42 · Opens on the source site in a new tab

Local photographs with credits and links to sources and licences. Where a usable image was unavailable, an archive link remains.

13 September 1993

President Clinton stands between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat as they shake hands on the White House South Lawn, 13 September 1993

Vince Musi / The White House – William J. Clinton Presidential Library, National Archives (NAID 1985480)

Licence

Public Domain, Free of Known Copyright Restrictions

See the photo in the archive