How Oslo's hopes were crushed

It is 10 years since the Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians was signed at the White House. BBC News Online's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds, who was based in Jerusalem in the 1980s, was in Washington on that day.

At the time, it was stunning that Rabin and Arafat would even shake hands

Monday, 13 September 1993 was a fine day. The White House lawn looked at its best and President Bill Clinton at his most relaxed as he stepped back to allow the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to shake hands.

We learned subsequently that this was a carefully choreographed manoeuvre, with Mr Rabin agreeing to a handshake only on condition that there was no kiss as well.

We also learned subsequently that Oslo was not the path to peace.

At the time, though, it looked good. That Mr Rabin and Mr Arafat would even shake hands was stunning. Mr Rabin had been a classic Israeli general, Mr Arafat the classic guerrilla leader. That they had approved of the Oslo plan was a moment of rare hope.

Negotiations

On a visit to Jericho not long afterwards, I was certainly startled to see a joint patrol by Israeli and Palestinian security forces, whizzing past in convoy up the Jordan valley.

There was a great feeling among the people. A Palestinian doctor friend said that Ramallah was becoming the "New York" of the West Bank. Former Israeli neighbours spoke at last of their hopes for a "normal" life.

Negotiations were intended to finally end in Palestinian statehood

The idea of Oslo, worked out in secret between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators, was that in the first stage there should be mutual recognition and a series of confidence-building steps such as Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories with a Palestinian administration in certain areas, and an end to Palestinian violence.

These would lead after five years to negotiations supposed to lead to a final settlement. The final talks would cover the difficult issues - the borders of the Palestinian state, the position of Jerusalem, the future of Israeli settlements and the plight of the Palestinian refugees.

In theory, this sounded well enough. In practice, it went wrong. Mr Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist. Palestinian militants started bombing buses. The words of William Butler Yeats applied:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

In retrospect, it could be argued that it was all the wrong way round. Security was supposed to lead to a settlement. Perhaps a settlement could have led to peace. Instead of ending with a state, perhaps they should have started with a state.

By this I mean that nobody knew what would be the end point of the talks. The Palestinians did not know if they would get the kind of state they wanted. So there was nothing for moderates to rally round when the rejectionists started the bombing. That bombing meant that the Israelis had no safety, leading in turn to a refusal to take the process on until they had.

Blueprint

And so it all fell apart, despite heroic efforts by Mr Clinton at Camp David in 2000 when he brought Mr Arafat and the then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (another ex-general) close, or so it seemed, to agreement. Perhaps it was one of those near agreements which simply define the differences.

Currently, there is no hope. The so-called "roadmap", the plan drawn up by the US, the UN, the EU and Russia, has similar features to the Oslo accord.

It starts with security steps and leads up to a state.

It is meeting a similar fate.

A Palestinian intellectual Dr Khalil Shakaki, passing through London the other day, made the point that, even now, Palestinians do not know what kind of state they would get. "There is no ultimate reward for taking an ultimate risk," he remarked.

The roadmap, he said, did not give enough precision. "There is no territorial contiguity promised for the Palestinian state, no control of its borders."

And yet, according to Palestinian sources, a blueprint for an agreement does exist. It is a document which was quietly negotiated by like-minded people on both sides as a follow-up to the Camp David talks and subsequent contacts in the Egyptian resort of Taba.

It is said to cover all the outstanding issues including Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and the "right of return" of Palestine refugees (they would have a right to go back but in practice very few would).

Of course, this document has no status. It simply represents what moderates would accept.

The trouble is that, 10 years on from the handshake on the lawn, the moderates are not in control.

The centre did not hold.