The Madrid Conference (October 1991) reaffirmed the primacy of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the institutional body representing the Palestinian people. For his part, the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, resumed diplomatic relations with Moscow and obtained abrogation, under American pressure, from the General Assembly of the UN, of the UN resolution which had condemned Zionism as a “form of racism and racial discrimination” (Resolution 3379, November 10, 1975). Secret negotiations which had taken place in Oslo led to a signed agreement in Washington on September 13, 1993. This predicted the constitution of a Palestinian Council to manage the transition to autonomy (for an interim period of five years), the transfer of power in matters of education and health, the creation of a Palestinian police force, and the withdrawal of the Israeli military from the West Bank and Gaza; negotiations over refugees, settlements, Jerusalem and borders were scheduled to begin in the third year of the interim period. Yasser Arafat entered Gaza and Jericho, the first autonomous cities, in July 1994.

On September 28, 1995, the Oslo II Accords divided the West Bank into about a hundred enclaves (Areas A, B, C, H1, H2). (See p. 20.) The Israeli army withdrew from the eight largest cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, the Israeli policy of accelerated building of new settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem rapidly led to a loss of illusions. The massacre of 29 Palestinians in the Tomb of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994 reinforced Palestinian opposition to a process which neither ended the Occupation nor the humiliations.

In November 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist, Yigal Amir. In 1996, Shimon Peres ordered, for electoral reasons, even though a truce had been concluded, the assassination of Yahya Ayyash, known as “The Engineer” and commander of Ezz ed-din al- Qassam Brigades (the military wing of the Islamic Resistance, Hamas). The Islamic resistance movement retaliated with a series of attacks described as “the response to fifty years of terror and Zionist crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian civil population.” Criticized for not being able to assure the security of his fellow citizens, Shimon Peres, in the middle of the election campaign, sent troops into southern Lebanon. At Qana, near Tyre, a UN camp was shelled. More than 100 civilians, mostly women and children who had taken refuge in an administrative building of the UN, were killed. The brutality of this short but intense campaign heightened the bitterness of the Palestinians.

More peace agreements followed: the Wye Plantation Memorandum, Sharm al-Sheikh, Camp David II, etc. All were limited in scope at their inception, and their application was partial, null or indefinitely postponed.