Oslo Accords

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Oslo Accords

Palestinian Liberation Organization-Israel [1993]

Also known as: Israel-PLO accord

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Date:: 1993

Participants:: Israel; Palestine Liberation Organization

Key People:: Yitzhak Rabin; Mahmoud Abbas

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Oslo Accords, set of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that established a peace process for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a mutually negotiated two-state solution. The agreements resulted in limited self-governance for Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip through the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Although the goal of the accords was to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by May 1999, the complexities that underlay decades of hostilities ultimately derailed the process and left the most challenging issues to smolder in the 21st century.

Oslo I

The Oslo I Accord (formally the Declaration of Principles on Palestinian Self-Rule) was the fruit of secret negotiations that began in January 1993 between representatives of Israel (led by Shimon Peres) and representatives of the PLO (led by Mahmoud Abbas) in Oslo. The agreement set as its basis:

United Nations Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from territories it occupied in the Six-Day War (1967)
United Nations Resolution 338, which reaffirmed UN Resolution 242 amid the hostilities of the Yom Kippur War (1973)

These resolutions, and their land-for-peace formulation, had been enshrined earlier in the Camp David Accords (1978) as the foundation of a broader Arab-Israeli peace process. After an exchange of letters in September 1993 affirming Israel’s right to exist and the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chair Yasser Arafat attended the accord’s signing ceremony in Washington, D.C., days later on September 13.

Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip: pre-1967 borders

Oslo II

Negotiations continued despite attempts by religious nationalists on both sides to disrupt the process set out by the Oslo I agreement. On September 28, 1995, Rabin, Peres, and Arafat signed the Oslo II Accords (formally Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), which detailed the expansion of Palestinian self-rule to population centers other than Gaza and Jericho. The provisions of this new agreement, which are far more comprehensive and detailed than those of Oslo I, included the following measures:

Elections for a chair and council to govern the PA, including the participation of Palestinians in Jerusalem in the election process
Redeployment of Israeli security forces from the cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Qalqilyah, Ramallah, and Bethlehem, as well as some 440 villages, before elections were to be held
Specifications for the redeployment of Israeli security forces in Hebron, a West Bank city with both Palestinian and Israeli communities
Delineation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into three types of territory in the interim period:
- Area A: areas under Palestinian administration and security
- Area B: areas under Palestinian administration but joint Israeli-Palestinian security
- Area C: areas under Israeli administration and security
Prevention of acts of terrorism, crime, and hostilities directed against each other
Arrangements for safe passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
Guarantees that negotiations on outstanding issues (i.e., Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and borders) would commence no later than May 4, 1996
A deadline of May 4, 1999, for Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to arrive at a permanent resolution

Breakdown in the Oslo process

The redeployment of Israeli security forces and elections for the PA as specified in the Oslo II agreement were carried out as planned. But the Oslo process confronted its first major hurdle on November 4, 1995, when Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist after attending a peace rally. Israel’s 1996 election, reflecting the growing concerns of the Israeli public over national security, brought to power Benjamin Netanyahu, an outspoken critic of the Oslo Accords.

Netanyahu took a hard line on curbing violence. He initially refused to meet with Arafat or implement Israel’s prearranged redeployment in Hebron, but he eventually agreed to the redeployment in 1997. Still, relations remained strained, and in 1998 U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton intervened to conclude the Wye River Memorandum, which made the resumption of the Oslo process contingent on actions by the PA to crack down on violence. The agreement led to division within Netanyahu’s coalition, leading to the suspension of the agreement only weeks after it was concluded and, ultimately, the call for an early election.

Although the Oslo process resumed later that year under the new prime minister, Ehud Barak, distrust and tension had already been mounting. The Palestinians, who had been promised self-governance within a timeline of five years, felt unjustly deprived by the whims of Israeli politics, while Israelis were increasingly suspicious of the PLO’s ability to prevent attacks. In mid-2000 Jerusalem proved to be the most contentious of the outstanding matters. After talks broke down, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative visit to the Temple Mount (where Al-Aqṣā Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, stands). The visit ignited an uprising from the Palestinians, and the new intifada (often dubbed “Al-Aqṣā intifada”) brought the Oslo process to a halt. Although attempts were made years later to revive the Oslo process, Israeli and Palestinian leaders were never able to put it back on track.

Learn more

To learn more about the circumstances surrounding the Oslo Accords, take a look at the following articles:

For the historical context behind the Oslo Accords, see two-state solution.
For more on the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, see Arab-Israeli wars.
To see how Jerusalem remains a complex issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, see Jerusalem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Whose capital is it?
To learn how Egypt set the stage for the Oslo Accords, see Camp David Accords (written by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, the accords’ broker).
To read about the decision by Arafat and the PLO to accept Israel’s right to exist, see Yasser Arafat: Toward diplomacy.
For more about the developments in Israel, the Middle East, and the world that brought Israel to the negotiating table, see Israel: The intifada and subsequent sections.
To learn what happened to the Oslo process during and after the Al-Aqṣā intifada, see two-state solution: Progress stalled.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Mindy Johnston.

Palestine Liberation Organization

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Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) summary

Palestine Liberation Organization

Palestinian political organization

Also known as: Munaẓẓamat al-Taḥrīr Filasṭīniyyah, Munazzamat at-Tahrir Filastin, PLO

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Arabic:: Munaẓẓamat al-Taḥrīr Filasṭīniyyah

Date:: 1964 - present

Areas Of Involvement:: guerrilla warfare; national liberation movement

Related People:: Yasser Arafat; Mahmoud Abbas; Imad Mughniyeh; Abū Niḍāl; Ṣalāḥ Khalaf

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Republican lawmakers seek to block Palestinian upgrades at UN • May 8, 2025, 3:14 AM ET (Jerusalem Post)

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), umbrella political organization claiming to represent the world’s Palestinians—those Arabs, and their descendants, who lived in mandated Palestine before the creation there of the State of Israel in 1948. It was formed in 1964 to centralize the leadership of various Palestinian groups that previously had operated as clandestine resistance movements. It came into prominence only after the Six-Day War of June 1967, however, and engaged in a protracted guerrilla war against Israel during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s before entering into peace negotiations with that country in the 1990s. It has since been the dominant political force in the Palestinian Authority (PA), which the PLO established in 1994 in coordination with Israel and in accordance with the Oslo Accords.

Foundation and early development

After the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 the Arab states, notably Egypt, took the lead in the political and military struggle against Israel. The Palestinians themselves had been dispersed among a number of countries, and—lacking an organized central leadership—many Palestinians formed small, diffuse resistance organizations, often under the patronage of the various Arab states; as a result, Palestinian political activity was limited.

The PLO was created at an Arab summit meeting in 1964 in order to bring various Palestinian groups together under one organization, but at first it did little to enhance Palestinian self-determination. The PLO’s legislature, the Palestine National Council (PNC), was composed of members from the civilian population of various Palestinian communities, and its charter (the Palestine National Charter, or Covenant) set out the goals of the organization, which included the complete elimination of Israeli sovereignty in Palestine and the destruction of the State of Israel. Yet, the PLO’s first chairman, a former diplomat named Aḥmad Shuqayrī, was closely tied to Egypt, its military force (the Palestine Liberation Army, formed in 1968) was integrated into the armies of surrounding Arab states, and the militant guerrilla organizations under its auspices had only limited influence on PLO policy. Likewise, although the PLO received its funding from taxes levied on the salaries of Palestinian workers, for decades the organization also depended heavily on the contributions of sympathetic countries.

Expansion and the rise of Yasser Arafat

It was only after the defeat of the Arab states by Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967 that the PLO began to be widely recognized as the representative of the Palestinians and came to promote a distinctively Palestinian agenda. The defeat discredited the Arab states, and Palestinians sought greater autonomy in their struggle with Israel. In 1968 leaders of Palestinian guerrilla factions gained representation in the PNC, and the influence of the more militant and independent-minded groups within the PLO increased. Major PLO factions or those associated with it included Fatah (since 1968 the preeminent faction within the PLO), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and al-Ṣāʿiqah. Over the decades the PLO’s membership has varied as its constituent bodies have reorganized and disagreed internally. The more radical factions have remained steadfast in their goals of the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a secular state in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians would, ostensibly, participate as equals. Moderate factions within the PLO, however, have proved willing to accept a negotiated settlement with Israel that would yield a Palestinian state, which at times has led to internecine violence.

In 1969 Yasser Arafat, leader of Fatah, was named the PLO’s chairman. From the late 1960s the PLO organized and launched guerrilla attacks against Israel from its bases in Jordan, which prompted significant Israeli reprisals and led to instability within Jordan. This, in turn, brought the PLO into growing conflict with the government of King Hussein of Jordan in 1970, and in 1971 the PLO was forcibly expelled from the country by the Jordanian army. Thereafter the PLO shifted its bases to Lebanon and continued its attacks on Israel. The PLO’s relations with the Lebanese were tumultuous, and the organization soon became embroiled in Lebanon’s sectarian disputes and contributed to that country’s eventual slide into civil war. During that time, factions within the PLO shifted from attacks on military targets to a strategy of terrorism—a policy the organization fervently denied embracing—and a number of high-profile attacks, including bombings and aircraft hijackings, were staged by PLO operatives against Israeli and Western targets.

From 1974 Arafat advocated an end to the PLO’s attacks on targets outside of Israel and sought the world community’s acceptance of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In 1974 the Arab heads of state recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinians, and the PLO was admitted to full membership in the Arab League in 1976. Yet the PLO was excluded from the negotiations between Egypt and Israel that resulted in 1979 in the Camp David peace treaty that returned the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt but failed to win Israel’s agreement to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israel’s desire to destroy the PLO and its bases in Lebanon led Israel to invade that country in June 1982. Israeli troops soon surrounded the Lebanese capital of Beirut, which for several years had been the PLO’s headquarters. Following negotiations, PLO forces evacuated Beirut and were transported to sympathetic Arab countries.

Increasing dissatisfaction with Arafat’s leadership arose in the PLO after he withdrew from Beirut to Tunis, Tunisia, and in 1983 Syrian-backed PLO rebels supported by Syrian troops forced Arafat’s remaining troops out of Lebanon. Arafat retained the support of some Arab leaders and eventually was able to reassert his leadership of the PLO.