1993 - The Oslo Accords and the broken promises of peace

CHICAGO: As a Palestinian, I grew up in the shadow of the pain and suffering of the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

Israeli violence during the 1947 and 1948 war forced my father’s family to flee their homes in West Jerusalem and live for more than two years in the squalor of a refugee camp in Jordan, until my father could bring them to the US in 1951. 

My mother and her family in Bethlehem were forced to suffer through constant Israeli military assaults after the war, even though they lived under Jordanian control. They were uncertain whether they could survive, so eventually they fled to the welcoming arms and sanctuary of the diaspora, settling in Colombia and Venezuela. 

But they lost so much. To this day, more than 10 acres of my family land, on my mother’s side, adjacent to the Israel settlement of Gilo, remains under Israeli control and outside our reach, simply because we are Christian Palestinians and not Jews. 

This cumulative weight of suffering was lifted from me as I sat and watched my hero, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, shake the hand of our oppressor, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, during the signing of the Oslo Accords peace agreement at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993. 

Rabin was a monster to Palestinians. In January 1988, as a general, he ordered his soldiers to “break the bones” of Palestinian civilians identified as “inciters” during protests against Israeli policies. Rabin was never charged over this but his lower-ranking officers faced a public outcry that was covered up by the Israeli government and the pro-Israel news media. 

Yet we were willing to set all of that aside for an Israeli who was willing, for the first time, to recognize Palestinians as a people; a people that had been denied recognition by all of his predecessors, including Golda Meir, a Milwaukee schoolteacher who became an immigrant prime minister and once cruelly declared that the Palestinians “did not exist.” 

On Sept. 13, 1993, we set aside the pain of the past and hoped to move forward thanks to a new beginning on “a great occasion of history and hope,” as President Bill Clinton declared at the beginning of the momentous event. 

I remember grabbing a chunk of grass from the White House lawn in front of the stage as a souvenir and placing it between the pages of the program that was distributed to Palestinian and Israeli guests at the signing. We all sat near each other, in different groups and sections, Jews and Arabs, and greeted the start of the ceremony with relief. 

The peace documents were actually signed by Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and the PLO’s Mahmoud Abbas, with Rabin, Arafat and Clinton looking on. 

Then, with Rabin to his right and Arafat to his left, Clinton nudged the two leaders together and they shook hands. 

The Oslo Peace Accords included recognition of certain rights on both sides. The Palestinians openly recognized Israel’s “right to exist,” considered a major concession at the time, while Israel recognized only that Palestinians would be granted a process leading to limited self-rule. Israel did not agree to recognize Palestinian statehood under the accords, instead committing only to a vaguely defined system of Palestinian self-government in the occupied territories, and to withdrawing its armed forces from much, but not all, of the West Bank. 

It was to be the foundation for a promise of a process that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state within five years. But this was never written down or documented. It was only interpreted. 

And yet, even as limited as it was, the agreement was an overwhelming relief to many, including my family. My wife is Jewish, and we subsequently traveled through Israel and Palestine, in 1994 and 1995. Although the agreement did not spell out the granting of true freedom, it did create an atmosphere of hope. Palestinians and Israelis, for the first time, got the chance to know each other as potential friends, not enemies. 

But the hopes for peace promised by the Oslo Accords were quickly cut short, in a large part because of the violence committed by Israeli fanatics, which provoked Palestinian outrage and sparked counterviolence. 

After shaking Arafat’s hand, Rabin declared: “We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears. Enough!” 

He should have directed his words toward his own people, too. On Feb. 25, 1994, just five months after the signing of the Oslo Accords, an American-Israeli doctor, wearing an Israeli military uniform and carrying an automatic weapon, entered the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron. He massacred 29 Muslims as they prayed, and wounded 125. 

This massacre, carried out by Benjamin “Baruch” Goldstein, a far-right ultra-Zionist who was overpowered and killed by survivors, prompted a retaliatory wave of suicide bombings by Hamas militants opposed to the peace process. 

They began with an attack at a bus stop in Afula on April 6, 1994, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, in which eight Israelis were killed and 55 injured. It was considered the first suicide attack, although there had been three others, one during the Intifada, on July 6, 1989, the others in April and October 1993. 

On Nov. 4, 1995, a 27-year-old disciple of Benjamin Netanyahu, Yigal Amir, a far-right Israeli religious extremist, assassinated Rabin, shooting him in the arm and back following a peace rally. 

Amir confessed that he killed the Israeli leader because Rabin wanted “to give our country to the Arabs.” Rabin’s widow blamed Netanyahu and Israeli extremists for influencing Amir’s actions. 

And so the peace quickly unraveled. Israeli and Palestinian extremists, both of whom opposed any form of compromise, escalated their violence. Eventually, Ariel Sharon and Netanyahu took control in Israel and quickly peeled back the Oslo promises. 

But I will never forget one memory from the time before the hopes were dashed. I was driving with my wife through the Jordan Valley in the summer of 1995 when we arrived at an Israeli checkpoint. The soldiers there handed us a flower and were curious about the idea that a Palestinian and a Jew would marry. 

“You’re the future,” one soldier said to us with a smile. 

It was one of the last smiles I would see on the face of an Israeli soldier.

• Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter. He is a columnist for Arab News and hosts the Ray Hanania Radio Show.