Ambassador Michael Oren reflects on the anniversary of the Oslo Accords, signed on September 13, 1993:

On the White House lawn, eighteen years ago, under the auspices of President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed an agreement intended to end the tragic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The Oslo Accords, as they were called, contained a Declaration of Principles creating a Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and initiating negotiations on all the core issues – refugees, borders, security, Jerusalem—to begin May 1996. At the time, the handshake between Rabin and Arafat was widely believed to herald a new age of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors beginning with the Palestinians. Those hopes, however, were all too swiftly dashed.

By May 1996, hundreds of Israelis had already been killed and wounded by Palestinian terrorists. The Israeli public’s confidence that the Oslo process would enhance, rather than worsen, their security was severely shaken. Still, many maintained the hope that a breakthrough could be achieved. Then, at the Camp David Summit in the summer of 2000, Arafat rejected an Israeli and American offer of a Palestinian state that met virtually all the Palestinian demands. Instead of making peace, however, the Palestinians went to war, launching the so-called Second Intifada. Thousands of Israelis were killed and maimed by Palestinian suicide bombers. And yet, incredibly, Israelis refused to relinquish the vision of peace. In a further effort to realize that vision, in August 2005, Israel uprooted 21 settlements in Gaza—an excruciating experience undertaken in the cause of peace. Yet the disengagement from Gaza brought no peace but rather countless Hamas rockets raining on Israeli neighborhoods.

It seems extraordinary that, in 2008, Israel once again offered to create a Palestinian state even larger than the one proposed in 2000, but Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas rejected it.

In every stage of the Oslo process, the main stumbling block was not borders, not settlements, not even Jerusalem. Rather, it was the Palestinian refusal to accept the existence of a permanent, legitimate, and recognized Jewish state.

Today, the Palestinians are poised to seek United Nations recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. By doing so, they effectively tear up the Oslo agreements and abandon their commitments to both Israel and the United States. Our position - and America’s - remains direct negotiations, without preconditions, leading to a viable two-state solution. The Palestinians, unfortunately, still refuse to join us at the negotiating table. In spite of all the bloodshed, traumas, and disappointments, we remain committed to the solution envisioned on the White House lawn eighteen years ago. Israel still wants peace.

Photo: Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony on September 13, 1993.