Oslo Accords

After secret talks in Norway, hosted by the diplomats Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul and begun by the Israeli academics Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak under Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of mutual recognition on 9 September 1993: Yasser Arafat recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and renounced terrorism, and Israel recognized the PLO as its negotiating partner. On 13 September Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas signed the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, sealed by the handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat before President Bill Clinton.

The accords set a five-year interim period of Arab self-rule in Gaza and parts of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) under an autonomous authority (the PA) created in 1994, leaving Jerusalem, borders, refugees and settlements for final-status talks; Oslo II (1995) divided the West Bank into Areas A, B and C. Rabin, Peres and Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, but suicide bombings by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Rabin's assassination in November 1995 undermined the process, and the final-status summit at Camp David in 2000 failed, followed by the Second Intifada.