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DOI: 10.24412/2470-1262-2024-2-81-87
УДК (UDC) 328
Mghdesyan Vahram V., Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia
Мгдесян Ваграм В. Ереванских государственный университет,
Ереван, Армения
For citation: Mghdesyan Vahram V. (2024). Comparative Analysis of Oslo 1 and Oslo 2 Agreements;
the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Cross-Cultural Studies: Education and Science, Vol. 9, Issue 2 (2024), pp. 81-87 (in USA)
Manuscript received 13/06/2024 Acceptedfor publication: 20/07/2024 The author has read and approved the final manuscript.
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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF OSLO 1 AND OSLO 2 AGREEMENTS; THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ СОГЛАШЕНИЙ ОСЛО 1 И ОСЛО 2; ИЗРАИЛЬНО-ПАЛЕСТИНСКИЙ КОНФЛИКТ
Abstract:
The article presents an analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process of 1993-2000 (the Oslo Process) by placing it in historical standpoint. It begins by showing how the Oslo Process was inspired by the legacy of peacemaking in the Arab-Israeli conflict, which postulated peacemaking between states, and resists that this factor had far-reaching implications for the way the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was analyzed and treated. This article also refers to what where the main provisions and goals of the agreements. As well as the factors that led to the nonimplementation of these agreements. Reference is also made to the territorial division underlying the Oslo II agreement. The purpose of this work is to show that these agreements were signed to ensure lasting peace and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but being a witness to today's realities that are happening in the Middle East, particularly Gaza, we can say that these agreements could not create that lasting peace. the peace they signed up for.
Keywords:
Oslo I, Oslo II, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Taba, PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Likud, Labour, I.Rabin, Y.Arafat
Аннотация:
В статье представлен анализ израильско-палестинского мирного процесса 1993-2000 годов (Процесс Осло) в исторической перспективе. Статья начинается с показа того, как процесс Осло был вдохновлен наследием миротворчества в арабо-израильском конфликте, который постулировал установление мира между государствами, и противостоит тому, что
этот фактор имел далеко идущие последствия для того, как анализировался и трактовался израильско-палестинский конфликт. В данной статье также говорится об основных положениях и целей соглашений. А также об факторах, которые привели к невыполнению этих соглашений. Также упоминается территориальное деление, лежащее в основе соглашения Осло П. Цель данной работы - показать, что эти соглашения были подписаны для обеспечения прочного мира и разрешения израильско-палестинского конфликта, но будучи свидетелями сегодняшних реалий, происходящих на Ближнем Востоке, в частности в Газе, мы можем сказать, что эти соглашения не могли создать этот прочный мир. мир, на который они подписались.
Ключевые слова:
Осло I, Осло II, Израиль, Палестина, Газа, Таба, ООП, Хамас, Исламский джихад, Ликуд, Лейбористская партия, И.Рабин, Ю.Арафат
Introduction
The Arab-Israeli conflict is one of the most prolonged, and intractable conflict of coeval times. It is also one of the dominant topics in the international relations of the Middle East. There are two principal levels to this conflict: the inter-state level and the Israeli-Palestinian level. In origin and in essence this is a friction between the Jewish and Palestinian national movements over the land of Palestine. The Palestinian problem therefore remains the core of the conflict. But the search for a settlement is thorny by inter Arab relations and by the involvement of outside powers. [1, p. 134-145]
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a focal point of international attention, with numerous attempts at diplomatic resolution. Among the key milestones in this complex journey are the Oslo agreements, which marked significant shifts in the diplomatic landscape. This article undertakes a comprehensive comparative analysis of these two accords, shedding light on their historical contexts, provisions, and impacts on the ongoing conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in historical, cultural, and geopolitical complexities, has defied resolution for decades. The Oslo 1 in 1993 and its successor Oslo 2 in 1995.
Chapter 1: Oslo Accords; The main terms of Oslo accords and why they were signed.
The current conflict has been previously described in many ways. The first way it is the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the second one is the conflict between Israelis and Arabs, and the third one is conflict between religions, Jewish-Islamic. However, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflects a more recent dispute about land ownership. Obviously, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict refers to the dispute between two peoples of different nationalities, while the Israeli-Arab description includes the conflict between Israelis and all Arabs. Despite the Jewish-Islamic conflict refers to the dispute between two religions, regarding the Muslim religion's disapproval of a Jewish state. Muslims, Jews, and Christians all shared this piece of land under the Ottoman Empire; however, when it fell in 1918 after the end of W.W I, the land came under British rule. [7]
After gaining control in 1949, Israel starts to built Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, which includes the West Bank in the east and the Gaza Strip in the west. However, in 1993 the Oslo Accords were formalized, which gave partial control of the West Bank to Palestine. The Oslo Accords consists of two agreements signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in which the PLO agreed to formally recognize Israel as state, and Israel allowed Palestine a form of limited self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Oslo Accords were endorsed twice: Oslo I in Washington D.C. in 1993 and Oslo II in Taba, Egypt in 1995. Oslo II divided the West Bank into sectors or areas A, B, and C. In Oslo I, the parties established an interim period with parameters of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, which
was set to end in 1999. Oslo II fixed the Palestinians direct control over their sector, but certain conditions within the agreement restrict any actual progress being made. [8]
First of all let's take a look on the main terms of Oslo accords, they were as follows;
1. A Palestinian interim self-government authority, a Council, to be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for a period not exceeding five years.
2. Elections for this Council to be held within nine months of the DOP entering into force. Jurisdiction of the Council to cover the West Bank and Gaza Strip (to be treated as a single territorial unit), except for issues to be negotiated in permanent settlement negotiations (see below).
3. The five-year transitional period to begin with the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Jericho and the Gaza Strip, and transfer of authority to the Palestinian Council. Authority to be transferred in the following spheres: education and culture, health, social welfare, direct taxation and tourism. Further redeployment of Israeli forces in the West Bank and Gaza to take place no later than the eve of Council elections, with the aim of being deployed outside populated areas.
4. To guarantee public order and internal security for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, a Palestinian police force to be established. Israel to continue having responsibility for defending against external threats, and for security of Israelis living in the West Bank and Gaza.
5. An Israeli- Palestinian Economic Cooperation Committee to be established.
6. The interim Council to negotiate a permanent settlement based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Permanent status negotiations to begin no later than the beginning of the third year of the interim period.
7. Permanent status negotiations to cover all outstanding issues not dealt with in the interim arrangements, including Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders, relations and cooperation with other neighbours. [1, p. 136-137]
It is important to note that the "Declaration of Principles" or the Oslo accords included that;
1. Israel recognized the PLO as Palestine's official representative
2. The PLO renounced the use of violence
3. The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist
4. Both sides agreed to Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the Jericho area by 2000
5. A five-year interim period would facilitate further Israeli withdrawals from other unspecified areas of the West Bank. [4]
It is worth to note that the two sides have their own motives to come to this agreement. First of all, it is the alternative of military struggle that was fast running out for the PLO. The Israelis had managed to drive the PLO out of their spaces in South Lebanon, and later from Tunis. Yasser Arafat's support of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War had enraged other Arab countries, and caused them to cut off aid to the organisation.
There was also decreasing interest of the Palestinian conflict in the Arab world. Following the «Camp David Accord» signed in 1979, when Egypt became the first Arab country which recognised and sign a peace deal with Israel, the option of united arab military action against Israel disappeared. By the late 1980s financial and other aid for the Palestinians from external sources like Arab countries, had also disappeared.
The third, and in my opinion the most important reason, was that the long-held governance of the PLO among the Palestinian people was being challenged by a new Palestinian forcemilitant Islamists. These rose to prominence during the intifada. Annoyed with years of Israeli occupation and oppression, and failing to see any achievements from the PLO, more and more young Palestinians especially were switching support to radical groups like «Hamas» and «Islamic Jihad». These were the challenges and problems hampering Yasser Arafat and the PLO
in the early 1990s. A peace deal would have resolved many of these problems, and given positive dividends to the Palestinian leader. It would give him international credibility, putting him on a par with leading world statesmen. After almost thirty years of leading the PLO, it represented perhaps his last chance to «rule» a Palestinian state. If through a peace deal Arafat was able to deliver real benefits to the people especially in terms of economic prosperity, that would cause them to switch support from the «Islamists» back to the PLO. The Oslo accords were convoyed by promises of financial assistance for development of the West Bank and Gaza from many international supporters. For example, Japan or the US. These were some of the motivations that drove Yasser Arafat to come to the Oslo Accords.
I think that when we are viewing the Israeli side, we clearly understand that the main reason was the intifada. The Israeli government see that this could escalate out of its control. They realised that compared to the aggressive and resourceful cadres of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the PLO was actually quite moderate. As a result of the Oslo accords, the intifada died down and the problem of capturing and imprisoning militant Islamists was shifted onto the PLO.
Chapter 2: The implementation of Oslo Accords.
The United States took the lead in convening an international conference to address the Arab-Israeli dispute following the removal of Iraq from Kuwait. The conference was held in Madrid [7] at the end of October in 1991. Negotiations were to be based on UN resolution N.242 [8] of November 1967 and the principle of land for peace.
All the parties who involved in the conflict were invited to Madrid but the PLO was excluded for its support to Iraq. The Palestinian delegation was made up of residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who went to Madrid not as an independent delegation but as part of a joint delegation with Jordan. Jordan provided a sunshade for Palestinian participation in the peace talks. Although the PLO leadership in Tunis was formally banned from attending this major international gathering, the Palestinian negotiators kept in close touch with their «contemporaries» in Tunis.
The Israeli delegation was headed by prime minister Itzhak Shamir, the leader of the right-wing «Likud» [9] party. Whereas «Labour» [10] is a pragmatic party committed to territorial compromise, the «Likud» is an ideological party committed to maintaining the West Bank as part of the ancestral Land of Israel. At Madrid I. Shamir struck a tough and uncompromising posture. By arguing that the basic problem was not territory but the Arab denial of Israel's right to exist, he came close to rejecting the principle of swapping land for peace.
Two paths for negotiations were established in Madrid. The first path is an Israeli-Arab one and the second is an Israeli-Palestinian. Stage two of the peace process consisted of bilateral negotiations between Israel and individual Arab parties.
These bilateral talks were held under American sponsorship, starting in January 1992. Several rounds of negotiations were held in the American capital, but as long as the «Likud» remained in power little progress was made on either track. It was only after the «Labour» victory over the Likud in June 1992 that the Israeli position began to be modified. On the Palestinian issue the Israeli position displayed more continuity than change following the rise of the «Labour» government under the leadership of I.Rabin.
Despite all the Declaration of Principles for Palestinian government in Gaza and Jericho marked a major revolution in the century-old conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. On 1993, 13 September the Declaration was signed on the South Lawn of the White House and stuck down with the historic hand-shake between prime minister I.Rabin and chairman Y.Arafat.
The Oslo accord consisted of two parts, both of which were the product of secret diplomacy in the Norwegian capital. The first part consisted of mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. Nearly all the publicity focused on the signing of the Declaration of Principles, but without the mutual recognition there could have been no meaningful agreement on Palestinian
government. The historic reconciliation was based on a historic compromise. It is the acceptance of the principle of the partition of Palestine.
The Oslo II Accord was first signed in Taba, between Israel and the PLO on 24 September, in 1995. Then four days later on 28 September in 1995 by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and witnessed by US President B.Clinton as well as by representatives of Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Norway, and the European Union in Washington.
The Oslo II agreement between Israel and Palestinian authority is the latest in the series of transition agreements reached by the two sides. The Oslo II is called an «interim» agreement because it was supposed to be the basis for subsequent negotiations and the preliminary of an eventual comprehensive peace agreement. The agreement is complex, in the same time it is so complex that many researchers argue that it will not be possible to implement on the ground. There were many issues concerning to the holding of elections throughout the territories, or the release of Palestinian prisoners within Israeli jails, the public annulment of the PLO manifesto and its statements concerning the destruction of Israel, the withdrawal of Israel military forces.
As I mentioned above the Oslo II divided West Bank into three (A, B, C) areas which is considered an «territorial anomaly» of this accord. The Area 'A' include all those areas within which authority is to be transferred from the Israeli military administration to the governing Palestinian authority. The withdraw of Israeli military forces from all other West Bank towns over a period of six months. The Area 'B' include most other Palestinian population centres, such as villages and refugee camps. Here also the point of withdrawal of Israeli military forces and the
transfer of civilian authority to the Palestinian administration.
The Area 'C' encompassing 60% of the total region, remain under Israel control. This area include all Israel settlements, the Jordan valley and all major roads and other transportation arteries. The complexity of these territorial arrangements has resulted in the creation of a large number of disconnected territorial exclaves. Both Israeli and Palestinian settlements find themselves surrounded by territorial belonging to the other side.
In an effort to police their respective populations, the two sides have agreed upon eleven joint patrols throughout the West Bank. Three months later, each side can request a change in the routes of the joint patrols in areas (A, B, C).
The Israeli contingent will be made up of members of the «border patrol», while the Palestinian contingent will be composed of four Palestinian policemen. Only Israeli soldiers will be allowed to arrest Jewish settlers. These security ideas which are reemerging in the present series of negotiations are a throw-back to the earliest plans put forward by Israeli government known at the time as the Allon Plan. Both Allon plan of then, and the present (above mentioned) Oslo II map, essentially creates an Israeli security «cordon sanitaire» around all of the Palestinian areas, with a single territorial corridor linking the Palestinian areas with Jordan. [11, p. 75-85]
Conclusion
With regard to implementation of the Oslo Accords, a number of problems are easily recognizable. In my opinion the first on is the inability to stick to the timetables laid down in the various agreements. Obviously, delays in implementing the various stages of the Accord, resulted in lengthening the whole five-year interim government period. Second one is the following the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. A right-wing «Likud» government was elected to power headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. And it is important to note that he refused to accept the legitimacy of the Oslo accords, or that it was binding on his government, and effectively stopped what implementation had been started by the previous «Labour» government. Permanent status negotiations failed to reach agreement on any of the points of difference between the Israelis and Palestinians. Former President B.Clinton of the United States made strong-willed efforts to mediate between the two sides, with hosting a summit at Camp David in the final months of his Presidency. But these failed to reach a settlement.
There had been two co-signatories to the Oslo Accords. It is The United States and Russia. But frankly speaking in talks, mediation was almost merely conducted by the United States. The Clinton administration didn't prove a true honest broker siding sometimes quite openly with the Israelis. The US in particular failed to endorse Palestinian demands for full implementation of the UN resolutions on Palestine.
Finally, the Palestinian Authority headed by Yasser Arafat and dominated by his «Fath» party, did not prove an able administrator in the territories where control was handed over to the PA. In addition, problems of corruption, nepotism and cronyism were endemic and political opposition was suppressed.
The peace process in the Middle East will now have to begin anew, once the violence stops. The mistakes made in the last one clear but in view of the continuing imbalance between Israel and the Palestinians.
References:
1. Dr. Iffat Malik, «Analysis of the Oslo Accords», Strategic Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 134-145
2. Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government, Washington, 13 September 1993, Meron Medzini, ed., Israel's Foreign Relations: Selected Documents, 1992-1994, volume 13, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, 1995, pp. 319-28.
3. Edward Said, Peace and its Discontents: Gaza-Jericho, 1993-1995, London: Vintage, 1995, p. 2.
4. Avraham Sela, ''Difficult Dialogue: The Oslo Process in Israeli Perspective'', 2009
5. Avi Shlaim, «The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Peace Process» Oxford University Press, 2005, 241-61.
6. Oren Barak, «The Failure of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, 1993-2000», Journal of Peace Research vol.42, no.6, 2005, pp. 719-736.
7. URL https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/madrid-conference (accessed 20.04.2024)
8. URL
https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/SCRes242%281967%29.pdf (accessed 20.04.2024)
9. URL https://www.britannica.com/summary/Likud (accessed 28.04.2024)
10. URL' https://www.britannica.com/summary/Israel-Labour-Party (accessed 28.04.2024)
11. David Newman, «Territorial Discontinuity and Palestinian Autonomy: Implementing the Oslo II Agreement», IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin, Winter 1995-1996, pg.75-85.
12. Catherine DeMetrovich. "The Oslo Accords:A Modern-Day Story of Occupation Told Through Violations of the Right to Freedom of Privacy", 2022
13. Anan Abushanab, "Connection interrupted: Israel's control of the Palestinian ict infrastructure and its impact on digital rights 10", 2018
Information about the Author:
Vahram V. Mghdesyan (Yerevan, Armenia)- Master's students, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Department of Arabic Studies, Yerevan State University, E-mail: vahram.mghdesyan@gmail.com, Mob. +374-99-23-22-29 The author permanently lives in Yerevan.
Vahram Mghdesyan's 16-digit ORCID identifier: 0009-0009-8272-5067 ORCID iD and the link to public record: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-82 72-5067
Published scientific works - (1) How acceptable is a picture created by artificial intelligence by Islam?
(2) Реформы принца Мухаммеда бин Салман Аль Сауда в контексте отношений с США
Acknowledgments: I thank colleagues for valuable advice in the process of this research and editing the article and I thank the reviewers for their valuable suggestions.
Author's contribution: The work is solely that of the author.
