The Oslo Accords
By Arab Media Watch director Victor Kattan
From Algiers to Madrid to Oslo
In November 1988, the Palestine National Council in Algiers declared the independence of the state of Palestine and recognised the existence of the state of Israel. By retroactively accepting the 1947 UN partition resolution as the legal basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 as its territorial basis, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) began the path towards a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that involved ceding 78% of the Palestinian homeland.
On 30 October 1991, the US and the Soviet Union issued invitations to Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon to attend the Madrid Peace Conference (Egypt was invited as a participant, having already signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979). The PLO was not invited. Instead Palestinians were to attend as a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, even though King Hussein of Jordan had severed all remaining ties between his Kingdom and the West Bank in 1988. The Madrid invitation provided that Israeli-Palestinian:
“… negotiations will be conducted in phases, beginning with talks on interim self-government arrangements. These talks will be conducted with the objective of reaching agreement within one year. Once agreed, the interim self-government arrangements will last for a period of five years; beginning the third year of the period of interim self-government arrangements, negotiations will take place on permanent status. These permanent status negotiations, and the negotiations between Israel and the Arab states, will take place on the basis of resolutions 242 and 338.”
The Madrid talks between Israel and the Palestinians (comprised of prominent individuals from the West Bank and Gaza Strip such as Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi) got nowhere. The following year, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told the New York Times that his government was deliberately stalling the negotiations (Clyde Haberman, “Shamir Admits Plan to Stall Talks for 10 Years,” New York Times, June 27, 1992). He said: “I would have carried on autonomy talks for ten years. Meanwhile we would have reached half a million Jews in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).”
Then in mid-1992 Dr. Yossi Beilin, Israel's deputy foreign minister and peace advocate, joined with Terje Roed-Larsen, a Norwegian social scientist and head of a major European peace research institute called Fagforeningens Forskningsorganisasjon (FAFO), to initiate a series of informal, secret talks between two Israeli academics and three senior PLO officials. The talks began in Oslo, Norway, on 20 January 1993, with the objective of drafting an informal document of basic principles for future peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians. These secret back-channel negotiations would eventually lead to the Oslo Accords.
It is important to stress that Israel has always viewed Palestinian national aspirations with suspicion, preferring Palestinian “autonomy” over parts of the West Bank in lieu of statehood. The Oslo Accords are deliberately ambiguous. The media were duped into believing these would lead to the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian State. However, they provided for nothing of the sort. The motivation behind Oslo was demography. As Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) in a policy statement on the Gaza-Jericho Agreement on 11 May 1994:
“Over the years, all Governments of Israel of both the Alignment, Labor, and of the Likud have not seen fit to annex the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria. Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir did not annex the territories of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip to the State of Israel. … Alignment and Labor governments knew then, and know today, that the annexation of 1,800,000 Palestinians would cause the State of Israel to lose its Jewish and democratic character.”
Instead, Israel wanted to contain the Palestinians in their cities, towns and villages by redeploying its soldiers from these population centres to their military bases situated elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Palestinians would have autonomy over their internal affairs, but this would be subject to overall control by Israel. In other words, the occupation remained in tact, even though Israel redeployed its troops from Areas A and B. In Area A, Palestinians were given full authority over internal security and civil affairs, while Israel retained responsibility for external security. In Area B, Palestinians exercised civil authority and maintained a police force to protect the “public order for Palestinians”, while Israel retained “overriding responsibility for security for the purpose of protecting Israelis and confronting the threat of terrorism”. But the fact was that Israel could at any time re-occupy those areas that it had left, which is precisely what it did after the Palestinian national uprising (intifada) began in September 2000.
The Oslo Accords
What is commonly referred to as the “Oslo Accords” essentially consist of the following letters, agreements and understandings reached between the State of Israel and the PLO:
■ Arafat-Rabin Letters, 9 September 1993
■ Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, 13 September 1993
■ Paris Economic Protocol, 29 April 1994
■ Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area, 4 May 1994
■ Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities, 29 August 1994
■ Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 28 September 1995
■ Protocol concerning the redeployment in Hebron, 15 January 1997
■ Agreement on Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron, 21 January 1997 and the Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of a Temporary International Presence in Hebron, 30 January 1997
■ Wye River Memorandum, 23 October 1998
■ The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum on Implementation Timeline of Outstanding Commitments of Agreements Signed and the Resumption of Permanent Status Negotiations, 4 September 1999
In the Arafat-Rabin Letters, the PLO recognised the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security, and reaffirmed its acceptance of UNSC resolutions 242 and 338. The PLO also affirmed “that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid.” For its part, Israel “decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people,” but it did not recognise the right of the Palestinian people to their own state.
The Declaration of Principles provided that Israel and the PLO “recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights”. The preamble to the principles provided that the goal of the agreement was to “achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.”
The main text of the Declaration called for a gradual transfer of power from Israel to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with ‘permanent-status’ negotiations on Jerusalem, final borders, settlements, refugees, security, water etc. to begin two years after Israel’s initial withdrawal from Jericho and the Gaza Strip. The DOP also provided for “a temporary international or foreign presence, as agreed upon” (Annex II d.), though Israel subsequently and consistently refused to have any foreign presence in the Palestinian territories, despite repeated Palestinian requests.
The preamble to the Paris Economic Protocol declares that economics is the “cornerstone” in the mutual relations of Israelis and Palestinians. It speaks of “strengthening the economic base for the Palestinian side”, but stops short of declaring a free-trade area or common market. The protocol provides for a limited customs union between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since the PEP was framed in an open-ended way, it allowed Israel as the dominant power to interpret the agreements in a way that deepened Palestinian economic dependence. The establishment of a customs union with Israel based on Israeli trade regulations and the imposition of arbitrary trading restrictions, Israeli control of labour flows, the lack of direct access to international trade borders with the rest of the world, and the lack of a domestic Palestinian currency, imposed severe limitations on the Palestinian economy.
The Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho area called on Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Jericho within three weeks. Significantly, this agreement established the Palestinian National Authority.
The Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities provided that Israel would transfer six ‘spheres’ of civil authority to the PNA: education and culture, health, social welfare, tourism, direct taxation, and value-added tax on local production. Under this agreement, the Palestinian Authority’s power over these spheres extended beyond Gaza and Jericho; it encompassed the entire West Bank, except that it did not extend to “Jerusalem, settlements, military locations and … Israelis”.
The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was basically drafted to implement the Declaration of Principles. This agreement is the most important of all the Oslo Accords. It provided for the creation of an elected 82-person Palestinian Council to supersede the PNA, and that a Ra’ees would be elected to serve as head of a 24-person Executive Authority. The Arabic word Ra’ees was chosen as a compromise between the Palestinian preference for “President” and the Israeli preference for “Chairman”, a term that would not so clearly connote a head of state.
The Interim Agreement contemplated four phases of Israeli redeployment from the West Bank. The first phase was for Israel to redeploy its army from “populated areas” of the West Bank. This phase was to be completed before the elections of the Palestinian Council. The remaining three phases would involve gradual redeployment to “specified military locations” over the next 18 months, to take place at six-month intervals.
Israel’s obligations under the Interim Agreement included:
● Allowing a safe passage for Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza Strip
● Allowing Palestinians to construct and operate sea and airports in the Gaza Strip
● Cooperation with Palestinians on security matters and border control
● Cooperation with Palestinians on economic issues
● Sharing tax and tariff revenue with the PNA
● Paying “due regard” to “internationally-accepted norms … of human rights”
The PNA’s obligations under the Interim Agreement included:
● Amending the Palestinian National Covenant
● Combating “terrorism”
● Extraditing “terror” suspects to Israel
● Cooperating with Israel on security matters
● Meeting regularly with the Israeli side on security matters
● Paying due regard to human rights
By the end of 1995, Israel withdrew its army from most of the urban areas mentioned in the Interim Agreement (Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Bethlehem) except for Hebron. According to the Interim Agreement, Israel should have redeployed its armed forces from Hebron within six months. However, on 29 May 1996 Binyamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister of Israel. He had campaigned on an anti-Oslo platform and delayed withdrawal from Hebron for over six months.
As a result, the safe passage between the Gaza Strip and West Bank was never established. Many families were cut off from one another and students could not go to their university of choice (the main Palestinian university is Birzeit in the West Bank). Nor did Israel allow the Palestinians to operate a seaport. Although the PNA built a small airport in the Gaza Strip, Israel destroyed it during the Palestinian intifada that began in September 2000. On many occasions, Israel also refused to share tax revenues with the PNA in direct violation of the PEP. The PNA, on the other hand, did its best to thwart attacks against Israelis by extremist movements. Its security services did this by collaborating with the Israeli army. As a result the PNA security services became associated with torture, capital punishment, mass arrests and imprisonment without trial. The PNA became the face of the occupation. A 1997 report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch is typical:
“An estimated 900 to 1,200 of the 1996 arrests, the overwhelming majority of which were of suspected Islamists, took place in February, March, and April, after four suicide bombings. In these, as in other arrests, the PA routinely violated the suspects’ due process rights. For example, authorities rarely presented arrest or search warrants when entering people's homes or workplaces. Many of the arrests were arbitrary: instead of limiting the operations to persons suspected of involvement with the bombings or with the military wings of Islamist groups, the PA raided mosques, universities and homes, rounding up suspected Islamist sympathizers in an apparently indiscriminate fashion … the majority of those arrested in these sweeps were never even questioned or interrogated about alleged offences ... The sweeps appeared intended to punish supposed Islamist sympathizers, and to be seen to do so, without founding these operations in law.”
On 15 January 1997, Israel and the PLO signed the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron. The Protocol called for the redeployment of Israeli soldiers in Hebron within 10 days of the signing of the agreement. It provided that Israeli forces would retain control of the section of the city populated by Jewish settlers as well as the area containing the Tomb of the Patriarchs (where Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler, gunned down 29 Palestinians whilst praying at the mosque in 1994). The Protocol provided that Israeli soldiers would control about one-fifth of the city’s area, in the eastern and south-eastern reaches of the city (H2), and the Palestinian police force would take control of the remaining areas of the city (H1). There are 750 Jewish-extremist settlers living in the centre of Hebron, and they are protected in four enclaves by the Israeli army. In contrast, the Palestinian population of Hebron stands at 140,000.
In January 1997, Israel and the PLO agreed to establish a Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) comprised of 180 personnel from Denmark, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. The Agreement on Temporary International Presence in the City of Hebron provides that “TIPH personnel shall have no military or police functions, nor will they interfere in disputes, incidents or the activities of Israeli security forces or the Palestinian Police.” Instead, the TIPH’s tasks include promoting by their presence a “feeling of security” amongst Palestinians in Hebron, and observing the “enhancement of peace and prosperity”.
From January 1997, the peace process was stalled for almost 18 months because Netanyahu decided to build a vast Jewish settlement in Arab East Jerusalem in a place called Jabal Abu-Ghuneim (Har Homa). Palestinians said Israel was prejudicing the status of East Jerusalem, an issue reserved for the final-status talks. But Netanyahu responded that nothing in the Oslo Accords precluded Israel from “taking steps to ensure that Jerusalem continued to function as a working metropolis” (even though settlement activity is prohibited by international law – see the AMW primer on Israel’s settlement enterprise). Fourteen members of the UN Security Council voted for a resolution condemning the Har Homa plan; only a US veto prevented adoption of the resolution. But even US President Bill Clinton took pains to explain that its veto did not constitute approval of the decision made by the Israeli government. The US repeatedly said it wished the Israelis had decided not to go ahead with the Har Homa project.
Finally, on 15 October 1998 Yasser Arafat, Bill Clinton, Netanyahu and their top aides met at the Wye River Resort in eastern Maryland for over a week. On 20 October, an ailing King Hussein arrived and took an active role in urging the parties to come to an agreement. On 23 October 1998, the parties signed the Wye River Memorandum. This was drafted “to facilitate implementation of the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip … so that the Israeli and Palestinian sides can more effectively carry out their reciprocal responsibilities, including those relating to further redeployments and security respectively.” Israel was required to carry out three troop redeployments from the West Bank, and the Memorandum defined the precise size of the first two of these three redeployments. The PNA was obliged to take concrete steps to outlaw and combat “terrorist” organisations, to prohibit illegal weapons, to prevent incitement of violence, to cooperate in security and law-enforcement matters, and to amend its Charter.
Israel carried out the first stage of the redeployments outlined in the memorandum, and at an extraordinary session of the Palestine National Council convened in Gaza in the presence of Bill Clinton, the Charter was formally amended to delete those provisions which Zionists interpret to mean the “destruction of the State of Israel”. However, before the Israeli government carried out further troop redeployments, Netanyahu charged that the Palestinians had failed to make good on their obligations on “terrorism” and security. But this was utter nonsense. As Dalia Rabin-Pelossof (Yitzhak Rabin’s daughter) and a former member of Israel’s Knesset said at a dinner sponsored by the Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA on 16 September 2003:
“Between September 1997 and the collapse of the Camp David negotiations in the late fall of 2000, less than a dozen Israelis were killed in suicide attacks. This was not because Hamas and Islamic Jihad did not try to launch attacks; it is because the Palestinian Authority thwarted those attacks. Even then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally telephoned Yasser Arafat (‘his partner’ as he called him) to thank him for his antiterror efforts.
As a result, Israel, in the period just prior to the Camp David talks of 2000, was safer than at any period in its history. Tourism was at an all-time high. The economy was bursting with foreign investment. And the international community, including the Arab states, was building economic and diplomatic links to the Jewish state.”
The main reason the peace process ground to a halt was because of Netanyahu’s intransigence and his mistrust of the Palestinians, who he sees as “terrorists”. In May 1999, Ehud Barak decisively defeated Netanyahu in the Israeli elections for Prime Minister. On 4 September 1999, the Barak government concluded a new agreement with the PLO at the Egyptian red sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum established new timetables for Israeli troop withdrawals, and codified Barak’s goal of reaching a final-status agreement by the autumn of 2000 – which never materialised (see the AMW primer on the Camp David negotiations).
Oslo’s flaws
Ron Pundak, Director-General of Israel’s Peres Peace Centre in Tel Aviv who was a key player in the 1993 Oslo negotiations, attributes its failures to the Netanyahu years of government (1996-1999), and also because the “patronizing Israeli attitude towards the Palestinians – one of occupier to occupied – continued unabated.”
In a paper published by the Institute of Strategic Studies (43 Survival, Autumn 2001 pp. 31-35) Pundak wrote:
“… Netanyahu sabotaged the peace process relentlessly, and made every effort to de-legitimise his Palestinian partners. His main weapon in his campaign against the Palestinians was the mantra that the Palestinians were not fulfilling its part of the agreements; and therefore Israel would not implement its part. In truth, during Netanyahu’s government, both sides committed breaches with regard to the agreement … But the Israeli breaches were more numerous and more substantive in nature.”
“Israel did not implement the three stages of the second redeployment, that is, did not leave the territories which were supposed to be transferred to the Palestinians; completed only one section out of four with regard to the freeing of Palestinian prisoners; did not undertake the implementation of the safe route which was supposed to connect the West Bank and Gaza; repeatedly delayed the permit to build the airport and maritime port in Gaza; prevented the transfer of monies belonging to the PA for extended periods of time; and continued to establish new settlements, to confiscate land for new settlements and to expand existing ones.”
But Oslo’s failures go deeper than that. The agreements were seriously flawed in and of themselves. The Palestinian negotiators were not properly advised by a group of lawyers, whereas the Israelis had a whole team of legal consultants in its Foreign Ministry and the advice and assistance of Israeli lawyer Joel Singer (one of the prime architects of the agreement). As then Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) wrote in his book Through Secret Channels at p. 162:
“I must admit that throughout the Oslo negotiations we did not review the texts with a legal consultant for fear of leaks. We had therefore to depend on our own experience and handling of texts. I tried to make use of the remnants of the legal knowledge I had acquired while studying law at Damascus University, but I could not draw much comfort from them. I must mention, however, that then DOP documents were reviewed by our legal consultant, Taher Shash, whom we had sent to Oslo for this purpose just before they were initialled on 20 August 1993.”
Raja Shehadeh - a prominent Palestinian lawyer who was a legal advisor to the Palestinian delegation of the Israeli/Palestinian negotiations in Washington DC from November 1991 to September 1992 - noted that a major flaw of Oslo was that it did not expressly prohibit Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (even though this is prohibited by international law). In an article for the European Journal of International Law (1993) Shehadeh wrote at p. 3:
“Until the signing of the DOP, all the areas in which the settlements were established (with the exception of East Jerusalem) were outside the jurisdiction of Israel. Despite the arrangements that led to their de facto inclusion within Israel it was never admitted that a de jure annexation had taken place. Now, however, it is agreed that the Government of Israel will exercise direct jurisdiction over these areas. This will be tantamount to annexation … By giving the Israeli Government direct jurisdiction over the settlements established in occupied territories, albeit in limited spheres, the outcome of the permanent status negotiations is preempted.”
The 1997 Protocol concerning the redeployment from Hebron was another example of a bad agreement. One would have expected that Palestinian negotiators insist on Israel dismantling the illegal settlements in Hebron (especially since this is a hot-bed of the Jewish-extremist group Kahane Chai) after they assassinated 29 Palestinian worshippers in a mosque near the Tomb of the Patriarchs. At the very least they should have insisted that the mandate of international observers include protecting Palestinians from physical attack. Instead, the TIPH’s mandate is restricted to observing the enhancement of peace and security in Hebron. They have no powers and the reports they submit to the “Monitoring and Steering Committee” cannot be acted upon. Their presence is hardly reassuring and physical attacks on Palestinians in Hebron continue.
In 1999, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem published a study comparing the human rights situation before and after the Olso Accords (Oslo: Before and After: The Status of Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, May 1999). The report noted that the closure (when Israel shuts off the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Israel completely) is the most encompassing violation of the human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, affecting almost every person in many areas of daily life. The report provided that: “From this perspective, the situation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories has deteriorated substantially since the signing of the Oslo Accords.” It also noted that: “Even after the Oslo Accords, Israel continues to use torture systematically when interrogating Palestinians, a flagrant and serious breach of human rights.” Although noting that the number of Palestinians tortured over the period actually decreased, it said this was as “a result of fewer Palestinians being interrogated by Israel, and not as a result of a change in policy. The percentage of interrogated Palestinians tortured by Israel has not declined.”
Oslo essentially allowed Israel to create a client entity, the PNA, to do its “dirty work” in those areas that it withdrew from (which did not include the substantial areas around Israeli settlements and by-pass roads). According to the laws of belligerent occupation, Israel is responsible for ensuring public order and civil life in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. By creating a client entity, Israel sought to transfer this obligation to the Palestinians by allocating numerous spheres of civil authority to the PNA which - prior to then - had been a drain on its resources such as education, culture, health and social welfare. But Israeli troops could always re-enter those places from which it had left and set up new bases, which is precisely what it has done since September 2000.
The Oslo Accords failed to end the occupation and provide the necessary conditions for Palestinian independence and statehood. As a creature of Oslo, the PNA is simply an extension of Israel’s military occupation. The fact that it is financially dependent on Israel (collections of indirect taxes and rebates) is further evidence that it functions merely as a puppet administration. The international donor community has also been duped into this process as Karma Nabulsi a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford, pointed out in an article she wrote for the Guardian newspaper (“Face up to the facts on the ground, 1 March 2005):
“Donors (mostly European states) now pretty much accept they have done the reverse of helping the Palestinian people achieve their independence. The facts on the ground created by Israel - and the international community's refusal to tackle them politically - have turned their engagement into one of funding the occupation. The World Bank, EU, UN, international agencies and donor countries have all come to the same conclusion. Their diplomats wander around international meetings, dispirited and bullied, with a profound awareness of their complicity, but no understanding of how to get out of it - or, as in the British case, aligning themselves entirely with the US and Israeli position.”
For the Palestinians, Oslo has been a catastrophe. It enabled Israel to market itself as a state making “painful concessions for peace”, when it was doing nothing of the sort (since Israel has no sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip so it cannot technically make concessions over territories that do not belong to it). Before the Oslo Accords, more member states of the UN recognised the PLO than the state of Israel. Now powerful countries such as India (who used to be at the forefront of the non-aligned movement arguing for Palestinian national rights) have flourishing military relationships with Israel. Whereas before the Palestinian leadership was free but in exile; they are now at home and imprisoned. And whereas before Oslo the Palestinian people were only suffering from one authority (Israel) violating their human rights, after Oslo they suffered from two authorities (Israel and the PNA) violating their human rights.
Oslo represented a watershed in Israel-Palestinian relations. But it came at a price as there is no balance between an occupying power and an occupied people or between a state and a stateless people. Under Oslo the Palestinians are in a permanent position of weakness, and this is precisely what Israel has wanted ever since it signed the Camp David Accords with Egypt in 1979: Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza but no Palestinian state (Israel may publicly say that it accepts the reality of a Palestinian “state”, but it knows full well that the Palestinians will end up with less than a state). But autonomy (meaning independence of action on the internal or domestic level, with foreign affairs and defence in the hands of Israel) is less than what the Palestinians expect or are entitled to, which is a sovereign and independent Palestinian state of their own in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The 2002 Saudi Peace Proposal is a multi-lateral (as opposed to bi-lateral) attempt to remedy the situation by providing Israel with peace, security and full diplomatic recognition by all Arab countries in exchange for a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories it captured in 1967, in line with UNSC resolutions 242 and 338. If Israel is serious about making peace with its Arab neighbours, this approach is the way forward.