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The weakness of the PLO after the Gulf War, the stalemate in the Washington
talks, and fear of radical Islam brought the Rabin government to reverse the
long-standing Israeli refusal to negotiate with the PLO. Consequently, Israel
initiated secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway directly with PLO representatives
who had been excluded from the Madrid and Washington talks. These negotiations
produced the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles, which was signed in Washington
in September 1993.
The Declaration of Principles was based on mutual
recognition of Israel and the PLO. It established that Israel
would withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Jericho, with additional
withdrawals from further unspecified areas of the West Bank during
a five-year interim period. During this period, the PLO formed
a Palestinian Authority (PA) with "self-governing" (i.e. municipal)
powers in the areas from which Israeli forces were redeployed.
In January 1996, elections were held for a Palestinian Legislative
Council and for the presidency of the PA, which was won handily
by Yasir Arafat. The key issues such as the extent of the territories
to be ceded by Israel, the nature of the Palestinian entity to
be established, the future of the Israeli settlements and settlers,
water rights, the resolution of the refugee problem and the status
of Jerusalem were set aside to be discussed in final status talks.
The PLO accepted this deeply flawed agreement with
Israel because it was weak and had little diplomatic support
in the Arab world. Both Islamist radicals and local leaders in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip challenged Arafat's leadership.
Yet only Arafat had the prestige and national legitimacy to conclude
a negotiated agreement with Israel.
The Oslo accords set up a negotiating process without
specifying an outcome. The process was supposed to have been
completed by May 1999. There were many delays due to Israel's
reluctance to relinquish control over the occupied territories,
unwillingness to make the kinds of concessions necessary to reach
a final status agreement, and periodic outbursts of violence
by Palestinian opponents of the Oslo process, especially HAMAS
and Jihad. During the Likud's return to power in 1996-99, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoided engaging seriously in the
Oslo process, which he distrusted and fundamentally opposed.
A Labor-led coalition government led by Prime Minister
Ehud Barak came to power in 1999. Barak at first concentrated
on reaching a peace agreement with Syria. When he failed to convince
the Syrians to sign an agreement that would restore to them less
than all the area of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel in
1967, Barak turned his attention to the Palestinian track.
During the protracted interim period of the Oslo
process, Israel's Labor and Likud governments built new settlements
in the occupied territories, expanded existing settlements and
constructed a network of bypass roads to enable Israeli settlers
to travel from their settlements to Israel proper without passing
through Palestinian-inhabited areas. These projects were understood
by most Palestinians as marking out territory that Israel sought
to annex in the final settlement. The Oslo accords contained
no mechanism to block these unilateral actions or Israel's violations
of Palestinian human and civil rights in areas under its control.
Final status negotiations between Israel and the
Palestinians were to have begun in mid-1996, but only got underway
in earnest in mid-2000. By then, a series of painfully negotiated
Israeli interim withdrawals left the Palestinian Authority with
direct or partial control of some 40 percent of the West Bank
and 65 percent of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian areas were
surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory with entry and exit
controlled by Israel.
The Palestinians' expectations were not accommodated
by the Oslo accords. The Oslo process required the Palestinians
to make their principal compromises at the beginning, whereas
Israel's principal compromises beyond recognition of the PLO
were to be made in the final status talks. |
