who had spent nearly 50 years at war.
A war so ugly
that the two sides refused
to even acknowledge each other.
It's a story about the time
these two enemies
tried to work out their differences.
Yup, I'm talking about Israel
and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO,
and the time they met up
in the unlikeliest of places
and tried to find a path to peace.
I'm Noam and you're watching
the History of Israel Explained.
Yallah, let's do this.
Our story starts in 1964
with the creation
of the PLO,
the "unified embodiment
"of the Palestinian national movement."
Through the 60s, 70s, and 80s,
the PLO's M.O.
was international terrorism.
They hijacked planes.
Took hostages.
Murdered Olympic athletes
just because they were Israeli.
And on, and on.
In short, the PLO
was Israel's worst enemy.
Things got even worse in 1987,
with the start of the First Intifada,
the Palestinian popular uprising.
Riots, stone-throwings,
stabbings, shootings,
Molotov cocktails, grenades, and bombs
became a daily reality for Israelis.
For three years,
teenage soldiers were given the thankless,
impossible task of containing
the frustration and unrest
in Gaza and the West Bank.
It was a dark, dark time.
The nightly news broadcast images
and video of the Intifada,
and the world responded with sympathy for the Palestinians.
But something changed in 1990.
Something very strange and unexpected.
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat made a huge mistake.
He sided with Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.
Suffice it to say that Arafat
had backed the wrong horse,
ticking off the Western world
and alienating the Gulf States,
who were the PLO's biggest donors.
The PLO was broke and desperate.
With their backs to the wall,
they had no choice but to start making nice with Israel.
And Israel, which was sick
and tired of what felt
like a never-ending cycle of violence,
was also ready to start shaking hands
and making nice.
American president George H.W. Bush
jumped at the prospect of bringing
peace to the Middle East.
He and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev
worked hard to bring Israel
and its Arab neighbors
into the same room at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference.
If those two enemies could make peace,
surely they could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Spoiler alert, they couldn't and they didn't.
But the Madrid Peace Conference
was still important.
Because it was the first inkling
that things could change between Israel
and the PLO.
More changes followed.
In 1992, Israelis voted out
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir,
and voted in his defense minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
Rabin was a giant in Israel.
The celebrated war hero of 1948 and 1967,
Rabin had already served a term
as Prime Minister back in the 70s.
It was he who authorized the daring raid on Entebbe.
Begun brokering peace with Egypt in 1975.
He was the perfect leader to usher
in a new era of peace with the Palestinians.
But he couldn't do it alone.
Half a world away,
in the most unlikely place,
a pair of idealists also dared
to dream of a new Middle East.
Professor Terje Rod-Larson
and his wife Mona Juul,
the future Norwegian ambassador to Israel,
had been working in the Middle East for a long time.
They had lots of contacts in the region.
And more importantly,
they had the vision and the chutzpah
to bring together Israelis and Palestinians
on neutral ground.
Oslo, Norway.
So as snow fell on Norway's frozen capital,
Larson and Juul introduced two sworn enemies.
The meetings between Israelis and Palestinians
were capital-S SECRET.
The director of the Mossad,
Israel's famous intelligence agency,
only learned about the talks
from a bugged chair he had placed
in Mahmoud Abbas' office.
You can't make this stuff up.
It didn't take long for the secret to come out.
By 1993, the world knew all about
the secret meetings in Oslo.
And something insane happened.
Israel and the PLO
agreed to recognize one another.
If this doesn't sound like a big deal to you,
let me just stress again.
These people are enemies.
Arafat had led the PLO
through some of the worst terrorist attacks
in Israel's history!
Meanwhile, Rabin had tried to put down
the First Intifada with an "Iron Fist."
The two leaders were separated
by decades of blood and mistrust.
Yet here was Arafat saying that Israel
had a, quote, "right to exist in peace and security,"
renouncing terrorism,
and promising to revoke some of the more,
let's say, violent parts of the PLO charter.
And here was Rabin recognizing
the PLO as the representative
of the Palestinian people
and agreeing to negotiate with them.
Just a few years prior,
the Israelis wouldn't have even sat
in the same room as the PLO.
And now the Prime Minister
was writing letters of recognition
to the PLO chairman?
Whoa.
But recognition was just the first step.
After that, it was time to set some ground rules.
In September of 1993,
they signed the Declaration of Principles
on Interim Self-Government Arrangements,
aka the Oslo Accords.
Here's what they established.
One, there would be a democratic Palestinian government
in the West Bank and Gaza.
If this government could keep it
together for five years,
it would be replaced by a more
permanent government structure.
Two, the Palestinians would manage
their own infrastructure
in the West Bank and Gaza
for the first time.
And three, Israel would withdraw
from the Gaza Strip
and parts of the West Bank,
starting with the ancient city of Jericho.
It all sounds kinda boring, doesn't it?
Especially all the infrastructure stuff.
I actually almost fell asleep saying it.
Turns out peace was a lot less glamorous than it sounds.
But think about it for a second.
The Palestinians had never had their own sea port.
Their own electric authority.
They'd never had the chance to govern themselves.
To be in control of their own economy.
To maintain some sense of sovereignty
over their own borders.
In short, they'd never had a country.
These boring-sounding, mundane things,
a sea port, an electric authority,
were stepping-stones to actual Palestinian independence.
Which meant that Israelis and Palestinians alike
freaked the heck out.
Private citizens.
Political leaders.
Journalists.
Economists.
Everyone had something to say.
Many Israelis wondered if the government
had lost its mind, believing,
in the words of author Ossify Klein Halevi,
that, quote, "Nothing would come out
"of this pretend peace except blood."
The PLOs and Hamas were working together,
warned Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun,
one of the leaders of the Religious Zionist movement.
He wasn't entirely wrong.
Just eight months after signing
the Declaration of Principles,
Arafat gave quite the disturbing speech
at a mosque in South Africa.
Among other things,
he asked the audience to, quote,
"come and to fight
"and to start the Jihad to liberate Jerusalem."
Not that Hamas and Islamic Jihad
needed any encouragement.
Beginning in 1993,
they unleashed a wave of terror on Israelis.
Stabbings and suicide bombs became
the new, horrible norm,
killing nearly 300 Israelis between
September 1993 and September 2000.
Within Israel, protests raged.
Bumper stickers called for
"the criminals of Oslo to be brought to justice."
Some extremist demonstrators
carried posters of Rabin
dressed as an SS officer.
In the West Bank,
Palestinians burned pictures of Arafat.
But the two leaders soldiered on.
In 1995, they met in Taba, Egypt
to sign a new set of accords,
known as Oslo II.
This agreement divided
the West Bank into three areas,
creatively named Areas A, B, and C.
Area A, which comprised six major Palestinian cities
in the West Bank, like Ramallah and Jenin,
would be run entirely by the Palestinians.
Area B, which in 1995 was home
to roughly 68% of West Bank Palestinians,
would be governed entirely
by the Palestinian government.
However, Israel would be in charge of security.
And Area C, which was home to few Palestinians comparatively
and many Israelis,
would be controlled mostly by Israel,
though the Palestinian National Council
would be responsible for things
like healthcare and education
in Palestinian areas.
But the sacred city of Hebron,
which houses the Tomb of the Patriarchs,
would remain under Israeli control.
Finally, the agreement mandated
that Israel release an unspecified
number of Palestinian prisoners in three stages.
Like its predecessor,
Oslo II was highly controversial.
In the Israeli Knesset,
the second set of accords
passed with the thinnest of margins.
61 for, 59 against.
Some of the "ayes"
came from the Arab anti-Zionist parties.
Yes, there are Arab anti-Zionist parties
in the Israeli Knesset.
But Rabin was unfazed.
"I will make peace with
"whatever majority is available," he declared.
Oslo represented more than just hope for peace.
It also represented prosperity.
Everyone, Israeli and Palestinian alike,
hoped for a turn in their fortunes.
Both the PLO and the Israeli media
marketed Oslo as a harbinger of untold riches.
The financial section
of an Israeli newspaper
featured a cartoon of a dove
with a $100 bill in its mouth.
So many Israelis believed in this promise.
In one of the largest rallies of the country's history,
over 100,000 Israelis
gathered in Tel Aviv
to show their support for peace.
And from the stage,
Rabin joined some of Israel's
most famous folk singers in singing a song of peace.
But the cheering turned to horror
soon after Rabin stepped off the stage.
A young, radical law student
named Yigal Amir pulled out
a nine-mm Beretta
and fired two shots at
his country's Prime Minister.
One to the head.
One to the abdomen.
Less than two hours later, Rabin was dead.
The country reeled.
And though I was just a kid at the time,
living in Baltimore,
I remember the feeling in the air,
tense and charged.
And I don't think I'll ever stop
wondering what could have been.
What if Arafat had stopped the terror attacks?
What if Yigal Amir had never fired those two shots?
Would there really be peace in the region today?
It's a painful and compelling question.
Because as Israeli society reeled,
Palestinian terror groups
stepped up the attacks.
By 1996, the Israeli public had had enough.
In a surprise upset,
they elected Benjamin Netanyahu,
who had protested against Oslo from the beginning.
The peace process continued
to limp along.
New deals.
New promises.
New disappointments.
By the year 2000,
the relentless violence
of the Second Intifada,
which was very different from the first Intifada,
had eroded any real hope for peace.
So in the end,
did the Oslo Accords accomplish anything?
Well, they got Israelis and Palestinians
in the same room.
And they also disappointed them equally.
Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Shin Bet,
Israel's internal security service,
reflected that, "both sides felt cheated.
"We didn't get security,
"and they didn't get a state."
Remember, Oslo didn't even promise a two-state solution.
It only mandated that the West Bank
would be split into different regions,
with different laws for each.
That the Palestinians would have
a democratic and autonomous government.
But even that seems out of reach today.
Gaza is governed by Hamas,
a terrorist group with little
interest in democracy.
The Palestinian Authority
in the West Bank has not held
an election in nearly two decades.
It's hard not to feel empathy
for the Palestinian people,
hanging in limbo between terrorists on one side,
and widespread political corruption on the other.
For Israelis, Oslo exposed the fault lines
in a divided society.
As the security situation deteriorated,
the Israeli public moved farther to the right,
convinced that peace with the Palestinians
was little more than a mirage.
A beautiful picture with little substance behind it.
But maybe there is hope.
In 2021, Israel established diplomatic relations
with the UAE, Morocco, Sudan, and Bahrain.
Yes, Arab countries who had once refused
to recognize the Jewish state
are now signing normalization statements named,
fittingly, after the father of Judaism and Islam.
These Abraham Accords
show us that peace can exist
between the unlikeliest of people.
So while I think we need
to learn from the lessons of Oslo,
we shouldn't let cynicism cloud
our hope for an eventual peace
between Israelis and Palestinians.
Shimon Peres said it best.
"Optimists and pessimists die the same death,
"but live very different lives."
Let's continue working to make peace possible.
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