Oslo I Accord
Israel and the PLO sign the Oslo Declaration of Principles
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The two men in the photograph never signed anything. Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas put their names on the Declaration of Principles; Rabin and Arafat shook hands over it.
Whose signatures are on the document
On the White House South Lawn on 13 September 1993, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres signed the Declaration of Principles for Israel and PLO Executive Committee member Mahmoud Abbas signed for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
U.S. secretary of state Warren Christopher and Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev signed as witnesses.
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat endorsed the agreement publicly and shook hands with President Bill Clinton presiding. Neither man signed it.
A framework with the hard questions postponed
The declaration set up a framework for an elected Palestinian interim self-government council, Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho area, and later permanent-status negotiations.
The interim period was to run no more than five years from the Gaza and Jericho withdrawal. Permanent-status talks were to open no later than the start of that period's third year, and council elections no later than nine months after the declaration entered into force.
Borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements and security arrangements were explicitly deferred.
The recognition letters came four days earlier
Separate mutual-recognition letters dated 9 September cleared the way for a public ceremony: Israel recognized the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people, and the PLO recognized Israel and renounced terrorism.
Those letters followed months of initially unofficial, secret talks in Norway that had already produced the declaration. Recognition was decisive for formal, public Israel–PLO dealings and for the signing itself rather than a precondition of negotiating at all.
Nothing transferred to Palestinian governmental control on the lawn. The document was to enter into force one month after signing, and implementation agreements still had to be negotiated.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date corrected
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Date corrected. The research places this at 1993-09-13.