Appendix B. Expanded Endnotes - Chapter 7 – Oslo

3. Sprinzak, Brother against Brother, Introduction and ch.8. On occasion, Zionist and Israeli assassins have eliminated political rivals or suspected traitors, such as Jacob De Haan and Haim Arlosoroff during the pre-state Mandate period and Peace-Now protester Emil Grunzweig in 1983. Peri, ed., Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, 37-39, 72-73; Sprinzak, Brother against Brother, 32-33, 99; Robert I. Friedman, Zealots for Zion, 212.

4. Fourth Geneva Convention, Part III, Section III, Protection of Civilians in Occupied Territories, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf (a/26 May 2022). See also: Ben-Nun, Fourth Geneva Convention; Mallison and Mallison, Palestine Problem in International Law, ch.6; Quigley, Case for Palestine, chs.23–24; Shafir, Half Century of Occupation, 26–27, 159–160.

5. Gerson, Israel, the West Bank and International Law, 76–82 and ch.IV; Stone, Israel and Palestine, 51–56, 118–120; Glick, Israeli Solution, ch.12. The official Israeli interpretation is that the West Bank and Gaza are “disputed” but not “occupied” territories because these lands devolving from the termination of the British Mandate never became fully parts of Jordan and Egypt. Jordan’s 1950 annexation of the West Bank was never internationally recognized, except by two countries (Britain and Pakistan), while Egypt never claimed or assumed sovereignty over the Gaza Strip but chose only to administer the area. Interestingly, neither was there any attempt to establish an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza while Jordan and Egypt controlled that territory, 1949-1967. Critics argued that the Zionists had accepted the UN’s 1947 Plan to partition Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state, even though it allocated the West Bank and Gaza to Arab Palestine; Israel had signed armistices with Jordan and Egypt, leaving the West Bank and half of Jerusalem within King Abdullah’s realm and Gaza under Egyptian control.

9. Washington's commitment was part of a package leading to the 1975 Israeli-Egyptian disengagement in Sinai. However, American contacts with the PLO continued secretly during the late 1970s. See Spiegel, Other Arab-Israeli Conflict, 300-03; Anziska, Preventing Palestine, 80-85. For a critical assessment of this U.S. commitment to Israel, see Neff, "Nixon's Middle East Policy," 156.

10. Tessler, History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 485-87. In December 1991 the General Assembly repealed this resolution with UNGA Resolution 46/86, under U.S. pressure and with the momentum coming out of the Madrid peace conference.

12. Flapan, When Enemies Dare to Talk; Avnery, My Friend, the Enemy; Heikal, Secret Channels, 321-25, 343-51; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 13. Some authors suggest that several Palestinian overtures may have been sent by the PLO to float trial balloons. The government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir amended the Prevention of Terror law to criminalize Israeli-PLO contacts. See Amendment no. 2, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-s-prevention-of-terrorism-ordinance-no-33-september-1948.

13. Jonathan Lis, “The 30th Anniversary of the Conference That Could Have Changed the Middle East,” Haaretz, 22 October 2021. Lis describes the East Jerusalem meetings between Israeli peace activists with Palestinians who would later become delegates to the 1991 Madrid Conference. Galia Golan, of the Israeli movement Peace Now, recalled how the speech by Palestinian delegate Haydar Abd al-Shafi in Madrid was made more powerful owing to the inclusion of messages "learned in the talks with [Israeli peaceniks] about what could and couldn’t be said to Israelis. It was,” she felt, “a very conciliatory speech.” Speaking about Palestinian suffering, the Israeli occupation and the Jewish settlements, Abd al-Shafi also directly addressed the Israeli people with whom we have had a prolonged exchange of pain: let us share hope instead. We are willing to live side by side on the land and the promise of the future. Sharing, however, requires two partners willing to share as equals. Mutuality and reciprocity must replace domination and hostility for genuine reconciliation and coexistence under international legality. Your security and ours are mutually dependent, as entwined as the fears and nightmares of our children.” For detailed accounts of secret Israeli-Palestinian contacts, see: Rabie, US-PLO Dialogue, chs.3, 8, 12; Abu-Sharif, "Prospects of a Palestinian-Israeli Settlement," in Lukacs, ed., Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 397-99; JPS 18:1 (Autumn 1988), 272-75, 302-03; Abu-Sharif and Mahnaimi, Best of Enemies, 257-62; Abu-Sharif, Arafat and the Dream of Palestine, chs.25-28; Beilin, Touching Peace, 7-46; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 4-8, 13-18; Heikal, Secret Channels, 343-51; Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace, 213-16; Kelman, Transforming, Introduction (Mattar and Caplan) and ch.7; Behrendt, Secret Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, chs.2-3; Kurtzer et al., Peace Puzzle, 293-94 (n.7).

15. For an excellent overview of the evolution of Rabin's thinking on the Palestinian issue and Middle East peace, see the afterword by Yoram Peri in Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs, 339-80. See also Horowitz et al., Shalom Friend, 1996. In a book entitled The New Middle East, Peres laid out his own sweeping vision, which complemented Rabin's pragmatic and tactical calculations.

16. Muslih, "Towards Coexistence," 3-29; Khalidi, Iron Cage, 153-55, 159, 190; Anziska, Preventing Palestine, 23-27, 260-66. Ben-Ami recounts a humorous anecdote about Arafat's difficulty in uttering the formula statement denouncing terrorism (one of the conditions for a PLO dialogue with the United States), stumbling over the word "terrorism" three consecutive times and mispronouncing it "tourism." Ben-Ami, Scars of War, 193.

21. R. Khalidi, "A Palestinian View of the Accord with Israel," 64-65; Mansour, "The Palestinian-Israeli Peace Negotiations," 5-7, 30-31; Abu-Amr, "Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations," 27; Corbin, Gaza First, 24; Peres, Battling for Peace, 284; Shehadeh, From Occupation to Interim Accords, 128-29.

23. Melman and Raviv, Beyond the Uprising; Schiff and Ya'ari, Intifada; Freedman, Intifada; Hunter, Palestinian Uprising; Mishal and Sela, Palestinian Hamas; Hroub, Hamas; Gunning, Hamas in Politics; Tristan Dunning, “Why the Hamas Charter Isn’t a Key Obstacle to Peace with Israel,” The Conversation, 1 October 2014, https://theconversation.com/why-the-hamas-charter-isnt-a-key-obstacle-to-peace-with-israel-31571. In 2017, Hamas issued a new 42-article policy document signalling what some observers considered tactical flexibility. See: “Hamas in 2017: The document in full,” Middle East Eye, 2 May 2017, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full; Yolande Knell, “How much of a shift is the new Hamas policy document?” BBC News, 2 May 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39775103; Khaled Hroub, “A Newer Hamas? The Revised Charter,” JPS 46:4 (2016-2017), 100-11, https://digitalprojects.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/214551.

26. Bulliet, "Future of the Islamic Movement," 41. Some observers assert that Israel had initially viewed the emergence of Hamas with equanimity, pleased to see an alternative to Arafat that might sap the appeal of the PLO. No one anticipated the rapid expansion of genuine Hamas power. Abu Ala (Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 84) noted that Israel later worried about Hamas not only outstripping Arafat but also toppling King Hussein in Jordan. See also Corbin, Gaza First, 36; Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman, “‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas,” NYT, 10 December 2023; Charles Enderlin, “Israel’s Strategic Error,” Le Monde diplomatique, January 2024, https://mondediplo.com/2024/01/02israel (a/ 7 Feb. 2024).

29. Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 111-16, 139-41, 157; Corbin, Gaza First, 51-52, 72-74. Lead PLO negotiator Abu Ala describes a "test" the Israelis demanded of him to confirm his status as an authorized negotiator and writes of the PLO's own concern that several rounds of intensive talks had taken place before it received definitive evidence that Rabin had "legitimized" the Oslo channel with the PLO and that the Israeli interlocutors held "official status." According to several sources, in August-September 1988 Rabin, Peres and Beilin had authorized the first-ever secret meetings with PLO representatives in search of a face-saving formula to end the Intifada. They produced no results. See: S. Cohen, Go-Between, 47-52; Rabie, US-PLO Dialogue, 9-12, 106, 142-43; Peres, Battling for Peace, 285.

30. Leslie Susser, "What Next?!" Jerusalem Report, 7 October 1993, 18; Corbin, Gaza First, 147; Shilon, Decline of the Left Wing, 20. Rabin had conspicuously absented himself from the historic January 1993 Knesset vote to lift the ban on Israelis contacting members of the PLO. Joel Greenberg, “Israeli Parliament Lifts a Ban on Contacts with the P.L.O.,” NYT, 20 January 1993.

33. Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 173, 182-85, 197-201, 218, 257; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, 71-72, 84-92. See also Qurei, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 119. Abu Ala (Qurei) explained to his Israeli counterpart in Oslo that "the Palestinian leadership has actually made a policy decision to refrain from placing any substantial issue on the negotiating table in Washington before agreement on that issue had been reached in [the Oslo] channel.”

35. Savir, The Process, 56-59, 96; Beilin, Touching Peace, 115-18; Peres, Battling for Peace, 294-302; Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 237-43, ch.16; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 175-79 and ch.10; Corbin, Gaza First, 154-58, 165-71; Waage, "Norway's Role," 14-15.

36. Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 103. Post-1948 Israel perpetuated the mandate-era Zionist inclination to deal with Arab states rather than Palestinian groups. Policies of eschewing contact and denying the other's legitimacy were mutual, however, and for years the PLO and Israel relied on third parties, such as journalists and academics, to exchange what little communication passed between them; the Jordanians, Egyptians, and Moroccans also occasionally played postman.

37. Beilin, Touching Peace, 7-46; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 220-22, 266-67. Ashrawi had long recommended Abu Ala to Beilin as a serious interlocutor, but as an Israeli official, Beilin had to draw the line at a meeting with a PLO official.

38. Shlaim, "The Oslo Accord," 24-40; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, chs.7-8; D. Makovsky, Making Peace with the PLO, ch.1; Heikal, Secret Channels, 433-70; Corbin, Gaza First, 18-28, chs.1-2; Peres, Battling for Peace, chs.25-27; Behrendt, Secret Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations; Beilin, Touching Peace, 50-53, 56-57, 104, 120-21; Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, ch.2. In 2022 Yair Hirschfeld’s papers were made public by the Israel State Archives: https://catalog.archives.gov.il/en/publication/the-road-to-oslo-new-documents-on-the-secret-negotiations-between-israel-and-the-plo-1993/ (a/7 Feb. 2023).

39. Hirschfeld, quoted in Shlaim, "Olso Accord," 33. See also: Kelman, Transforming, 141-44; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, chs.7, 11; Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, ch.3; Corbin, Gaza First, 18-20. Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 52-53; Corbin, Gaza First, 18; Waage, "Norway's Role," 7.

40. Shlaim, "Oslo Accord," 30. Serge Schmemann, "Negotiators, Arab and Israeli, Built Friendship from Mistrust," NYT, 28 September 1995; Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 58-59, 233-34; Savir, The Process, 11-12, 30-31; Waage, "Norway's Role," 8-9; Corbin, Gaza First, 18-20, 211, chs.2-3 and elsewhere.

42. Ross, Missing Peace, 114-18; Kurtzer et al., Peace Puzzle, 11-20, 38-39, 42-47; Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 230-31, 256, 264-65, 278; Christopher, Chances of a Lifetime, 199-200; Peres, Battling for Peace, 283-85, 296-97, 303-06; Corbin, Gaza First, 66-67, 95-96, 174-77; Beilin, Touching Peace, 42, 79, 88, 108, 120-23; Hudson, "Clinton Administration," 52; Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, 250-54; Savir, The Process, 21-22, 41, 66-67; Hanieh, Camp David Papers, 73-74 (citations refer to this full-length version rather than the abridged version published in JPS in 2001.) Clinton (My Life, 541) makes the odd comment that Christopher played a role in keeping the secret Oslo talks "on track." The PLO and Israel also informed the Egyptians of the Oslo track.

46. In a fourth, secret, letter to Holst, Peres pledged that Israel would permit existing non-PLO Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem to remain open. Waage, "Norway's Role," 17; Savir, The Process, 72, 76-77; Beilin, Touching Peace, 118; Golan, Israel and Palestine, 14-15.

47. Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinian People, 338-40; Beilin, Touching Peace, 90-92, 126-28; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 208-09; Savir, The Process, 49-53, 67-77; D. Makovsky, Making Peace with the PLO, 79-81; Ross, Missing Peace, 117-19; Waage, "Norway's Role," 15-17; Corbin, Gaza First, 134-36, 174-97; Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 216-17, 255, 258, ch.17.

49. Quandt, Peace Process, 329. Corbin writes that the final DOP necessitated some twenty-five drafts. Corbin, Gaza First, 165. For a textual juxtaposition of Palestinian vs. Israeli proposals along the way, see Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 218-20. Abbas, Through Secret Channels, ch.9, reproduces the major draft DOP that had emerged after the first five rounds of discussions.

50. Abbas, Through Secret Channels, 200-04; Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 132-33, 170-75; D. Makovsky, Making Peace with the PLO, 34-38. See also: Christopher, Chances of a Lifetime, 205-07; Savir, The Process, 19, 139-40; Ross, Missing Peace, 188-90; Corbin, Gaza First, 68-69; Beilin, Touching Peace, 82, 116, 137; Peres, Battling for Peace, 286-94; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, 108-21. The 4 May 1994 signing ceremony was briefly interrupted when Arafat initially balked at signing off on an appendix of maps.

51. Savir, The Process, 145-46; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, 108-19. Peres proposed a special international donors' fund to assist the PLO in developing the projects and institutions necessary for its successful administration of the areas over which it took control; the first Donors' Conference convened in Paris in September 1994.

52. Kurtzer et al., Peace Puzzle, 113; Buttu, “Oslo Agreements,” 21. Khatib (Palestinian Politics, 127) claims that “a thorough examination of the Map No.1” revealed that Area A comprised “only three per cent of the Palestinian territories.”

53. Articles 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 15, 19, 20, 22, and 23 of the Charter {doc.21}; Harkabi, Palestinian Covenant and Its Meaning. See also: Cobban, Palestine Liberation Organization, 43-44; Muslih, "Towards Coexistence"; Khalidi, Iron Cage, 190; Savir, The Process, 70-75; B. Rubin, Transformation of Palestinian Politics, 96; Miller, PLO and the Politics of Survival. For a dissenting Israeli view that the PLO Charter was already a dead letter long before Oslo, see Avnery, "Should the Palestinians Change the Charter?"

55. Savir, The Process, 298. Savir writes that Abu Mazen shared new wording with Joel Singer, who confirmed that it met the Oslo requirements. Raja Shehadeh reproduces in the appendix to his book an "Extract from the Palestine National Council, Draft Bill Amending the Palestine National Charter, Gaza, 24 April 1996," which reveals the decision taken to amend the Charter and a charge to the PNC "Legal Committee" to produce a new draft, but no draft itself. Shehadeh, From Occupation to Interim Accords, 277-78. See also Qurie, Beyond Oslo, 14-17; Watson, Oslo Accords, ch.10. The Palestinian commitment to amend the Charter was reaffirmed in the Wye Plantation Agreement, in a letter from Arafat to President Clinton (22 January 1998), and by the PNC meeting of 14 December 1998. Ross (Missing Peace, 484-86) describes the nail-biting tension over whether the December 1998 reaffirmation vote in Clinton’s presence would be merely a "voice" vote--"applaud[ing] and maybe stand[ing]"--as Arafat wanted, or a more clearly demonstrative hands-up vote, as Ross insisted. In the end it was a hands-raised then standing vote, but not counted. Ross says he saw three-quarters of the 500+ participants voting in favor. See also the introductory remarks to the text of the Charter as given on the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, https://www.gov.il/en/Departments/General/the-palestinian-national-charter (a/24 Apr. 2022). Yossi Ben-Aharon, in a retrospective critique of the Oslo process, claims that the vote taken at the April 1996 PNC meeting in Gaza was questionable, "if not altogether invalid," in terms of the Charter's own rules for amendment (Article 33)--a view not shared by many Palestinians. He further points to the decisions taken at a February 2001 meeting of prominent Palestinians in Cairo as confirming that the original Charter was still in force for several reasons. Ben-Aharon, "Foundering Illusions," 60. See also Podhoretz, "Intifada II: Death of an Illusion?" 90.

59. Lukacs, ed., Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 397-99, 403-11, 438-41, 449-53; Saunders, Other Walls, 203-34. See also: PLO documents in JPS 18:2 (Winter 1989), 213-23, and 18:3 (Spring 1989), 161-71, 176-81; Abu-Sharif and Mahnaimi, Best of Enemies, 257-62, 272-73; Abu-Sharif, Arafat and the Dream of Palestine, chs.27-28; Heikal, Secret Channels, 388-99.

62. For a discussion of Likud prime ministers caught between the pragmatics of ruling the country and adherence to ideologies of "Greater Israel," see Ilan Peleg, "Zionist Right and Constructivist Realism," 127-53; Naor, "Hawks' Beaks, Doves' Feathers," 154-91.

66. Hirsh Goodman, "Oslo II: Can It Work?" Jerusalem Report, 19 October 1995, 58. Writing in 2003, Kimmerling and Migdal (Palestinian People, 333) referred to the "astounding proportion" of the Oslo plans and promises that "were actually put into effect between 1993 and the end of 1995." See also: Serge Schmemann, "Beyond the Details, a Sketch of Peace," NYT, 1 October 1995; Savir, The Process, 79; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, 121-40.

68. Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 267-68. Uri Savir (The Process, 68-69) echoed Abu Ala's assessment, writing that with mutual recognition, the two sides "were dealing with the ideological roots of the conflict. Without a mutual change in attitude by the representatives of the Palestinian people and the State of Israel, the principles of the Declaration of Principles would never be realized."

71. Peres, quoted in Qurie, From Oslo to Jerusalem, 256-57. Abu Ala suggested that Israel allow the return of the Hamas deportees from Lebanon, release Palestinian detainees, cease IDF action in Palestinian areas, and lift the closure of Jerusalem.

72. Kass and O'Neill, Deadly Embrace, 61; Savir, The Process, 121-23; Ross, Missing Peace, 126-28; Steven Erlanger, “Arafat, Denouncing Bombings, Still Gets the Blame,” NYT, 4 August 1997; “Tears, Disbelief Characterized Arafat’s First Reaction to Murder,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 8 November 1995; Joel Greenberg, “Assassination in Israel: Arafat Visits Israel to Give Condolences to Leah Rabin,” NYT, 10 November 1995; Tessler, History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 784.

77. Herb Keinon, "Rabbis: Halacha Forbids Moving Army Bases from Judea, Samaria," JP International Edition, 22 July 1995; Yossi Klein Halevi, "Torn between God and Country," Jerusalem Report, 10 August 1995, 12-17. See also: Ehud Ya'ari, "A Jewish Fatwa," Jerusalem Report, 10 August 1995, 35; Chaim Herzog, "Divide the Land, Not the People," Jerusalem Report, 10 August 1995, 60.

79. Serge Schmemann, "Israel's Leader Declines to Call Early Elections," NYT, 8 November 1995; Thomas L. Friedman, "How About You?" NYT, 8 November 1995. See also: Zeev Chafets, "Israel's Quiet Anger," NYT, 7 November 1995; A. M. Rosenthal, "For Peace in Israel" and Serge Schmemann, "The Political Finger-Pointing Begins," both in NYT, 10 November 1995; Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land, 388-89, 391-93; Savir, The Process, 247-48, 254-55; Rubenberg, The Palestinians, 69; Serge Schmemann, "Rabin Is Laid to Rest, Mourned by Israel and the World," NYT, 7 November 1995.

88. Seitz, Tracking Palestinian Public Support, 14; Dowty, Israel/Palestine, 154; Clyde Haberman, "No More Magic in the Middle East," NYT, 14 May 1995. See also: Serge Schmemann, "Living Apart in Mideast," NYT, 26 September 1995; Alison Mitchell, "A Less Stirring Moment than Last Time," NYT, 29 September 1995; Leon, “Israeli Public Opinion Polls on the Peace Process”; Khatib, Palestinian Politics, ch.5