Washington, September 13, 1993. On the White House South Lawn, Israeli and Palestinian representatives signed a Declaration of Principles intended to turn secret negotiations into a phased political process. The image remembered around the world is the handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. The signatures on the document, however, belonged to Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO official Mahmoud Abbas.
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From secret talks to public ceremony
The agreement grew out of confidential meetings in Norway begun in 1993. Israeli academics and PLO representatives established a channel that gradually acquired official standing. Norway provided a discreet setting; the United States became the stage for the public breakthrough. By late August, negotiators had initialed a text. Mutual-recognition letters exchanged before the ceremony changed the political framework in which it would be signed.
In those letters, the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and security, accepted relevant United Nations resolutions and renounced terrorism and other violence. Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and agreed to negotiate with it. Israel did not recognize a Palestinian state, and the PLO did not receive a final settlement. The exchange opened a formal relationship between parties that had long denied one another legitimacy.
That distinction matters. Oslo was not a peace treaty ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was an interim framework—a schedule and structure for limited self-government, Israeli redeployment and later negotiations over the hardest questions.
What was signed
The formal title was the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements. According to the United Nations text, Shimon Peres signed for the Government of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas for the PLO. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev signed as witnesses. President Bill Clinton presided over the ceremony; Rabin and Arafat supplied its defining visual moment.
The declaration envisioned Palestinian interim self-government for a transitional period of up to five years. It called for elections to a Palestinian council and for Israeli forces to withdraw first from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area. Authority in fields such as education, health, social welfare, direct taxation and tourism was to be transferred in stages.
The agreement anchored the future process in United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. It anticipated permanent-status negotiations beginning no later than the third year of the interim period. Yet it postponed Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, security arrangements, borders, relations with neighbors and other fundamental issues. Deferral made agreement possible in 1993, but it also left the process dependent on trust, implementation and political conditions that could deteriorate.
The handshake and the hesitation
Rabin’s participation carried visible political weight because he was a former military chief and sitting Israeli prime minister. Arafat’s appearance at the White House marked the PLO’s movement from exile and armed struggle toward formal negotiation. Clinton’s outstretched arms behind them gave the ceremony a carefully composed symbolism.
The moment should not be converted into invented certainty. Contemporary participants and audiences understood that the leaders approached the process with different aims and serious reservations. Rabin and Arafat did not sign a shared historical interpretation. They accepted a framework that each believed might serve national interests and reduce conflict.
Nor did the lawn represent everyone affected. Israelis and Palestinians who opposed the agreement remained powerful. Palestinian factions rejected the PLO’s compromises. Israeli opponents argued that territorial withdrawal and recognition of the PLO endangered security or surrendered claims. The process began amid hope, but never amid consensus.
Implementation begins
Further agreements were required to translate the declaration into governance. The 1994 Gaza–Jericho Agreement provided for initial Israeli withdrawal and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. The 1995 Interim Agreement, often called Oslo II, divided parts of the West Bank into Areas A, B and C with different administrative and security arrangements.
These structures shaped daily life, but the interim system did not mature into the permanent agreement contemplated in 1993. Violence by Palestinian militants, Israeli military responses, continuing settlement expansion, political distrust and disputes over compliance eroded support. Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist in November 1995 after a peace rally. Later negotiations failed to resolve final-status questions, and the second intifada beginning in 2000 marked a catastrophic collapse of the process.
The Oslo institutions nevertheless endured in altered form. The Palestinian Authority remained, security and civil arrangements continued unevenly, and the division of the West Bank created by Oslo II became a lasting framework rather than a brief transition. An agreement designed as a bridge acquired the features of a destination.
Promise, structure and omission
Supporters remember Oslo as proof that direct recognition and negotiation were possible. Critics argue that its gradualism deferred the very issues most likely to destroy the process, while creating asymmetric interim arrangements without a guaranteed endpoint. Both judgments begin from features actually present in the text.
The declaration’s language was procedural. It specified committees, timetables, jurisdiction and transfer of authority. It did not define Palestinian statehood, determine borders or settle claims to Jerusalem. The public ceremony could therefore symbolize reconciliation more clearly than the document could guarantee it.
Historical evaluation also requires separating the agreement from the mythology of a single handshake. Secret Norwegian diplomacy, American sponsorship, intra-Israeli debate, Palestinian political legitimacy, regional strategy and events on the ground all shaped the outcome. No photograph could contain that full system.
Why September 13 still matters
The signing changed political language. Israel and the PLO moved from mutual rejection to mutual recognition; Palestinian self-government shifted from abstract demand toward institutions; and an agreed negotiating track placed a two-state outcome closer to formal diplomacy, even though the declaration did not promise one in explicit final terms.
Its later failure to produce a permanent settlement does not make the day meaningless, and the ceremony’s hope does not erase the harm and instability that followed. September 13, 1993 matters precisely because it holds both possibilities. It shows what adversaries can formalize when they recognize one another as negotiating counterparts—and how an interim agreement can fail when deferred questions, violence and unequal power overwhelm the process.
Continue exploring: visit Major Historical Events, then read about the Two Plus Four Treaty, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Sources and method
The account is based on the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian’s history of the Oslo Accords, the United Nations text of the Declaration of Principles, and the UN Peacemaker agreement record. The article distinguishes the formal signatories from the leaders in the famous handshake and separates the 1993 declaration from later agreements and outcomes.
Written and fact-checked by the Discover Today in History editorial team. The featured artwork is an AI-assisted editorial reconstruction of the signing table, not an authentic photograph.
