🏛 His reasons
Netanyahu argued that Oslo gave the Palestinians land and weapons while they had not given up terrorism. He did not want a Palestinian state, and he wanted Israel to keep strong control of security and of the West Bank.
The Attempts to Find a Lasting Peace, 1987-2012 » Rabin's Assassination, Netanyahu, Hamas and Hezbollah
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Edexcel spec: Paper 2 Section B, Breadth study B7, Key topic 5
- Why Rabin was assassinated in 1995 and what it changed
- Why Netanyahu opposed Oslo and how he ran the peace process from 1996
- The motives of Hamas and Hezbollah
- How attacks and settlement building slowed the peace process
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Unlock This CourseOpposition to Oslo
The Oslo Accords of 1993 were popular with many people, but not with everyone. On both sides there were people who thought the deal gave away too much. Some Israelis feared that handing land and control to the Palestinians would make Israel less safe. Some Palestinians felt the PLO had accepted too little: there was no promise of a state, and Israeli settlements and the army stayed. Opposition took the form of protests, political campaigns and, from some groups, violence.
Key terms:
- Likud: the main right-wing party in Israel, led in the 1990s by Benjamin Netanyahu. It opposed giving up land in the West Bank and Gaza.
- Suicide bombing: an attack in which the bomber kills themselves as well as their victims, usually in a crowded public place.
- Reciprocity: the idea that each side must keep its promises before the other will keep theirs. Netanyahu used it to mean that Israel would only hand over land if the Palestinians stopped attacks.
The assassination of Rabin, 1995
Rabin was prime minister when Oslo was signed, so he became the target of Israeli anger. Settlers and right-wing groups held noisy protests and accused him of betraying the country. Likud, the party of the opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, attacked the Accords in the Knesset (the Israeli parliament).
On 4 November 1995, Rabin spoke at a large peace rally in Tel Aviv. As he walked to his car afterwards, he was shot dead by Yigal Amir, a young Israeli law student who was against giving up land. Rabin was 73. The assassination of a leader (the murder of a political figure) came from someone on his own side, not from an enemy.
Results:
- Shimon Peres, the foreign minister who had worked on Oslo, became prime minister.
- The peace process lost the leader who had the standing, as a former army chief, to persuade Israelis to take risks for peace.
- Many Israelis were shocked and more determined to support peace, but the country was left sharply divided.
Netanyahu and his opposition to Oslo
🗳 His rise
In May 1996 he became prime minister, winning an election by a very small margin against Peres. Suicide bombings in the weeks before had damaged support for Peres and the peace policy.
Netanyahu said that he would not scrap the agreements, but he ran them in a different way. He insisted on reciprocity: no more land unless the Palestinians fought terrorism. Under him the process was slower and more grudging:
- The Israeli army withdrew from most of Hebron only in January 1997, after delays.
- In October 1998 he signed the Wye River Memorandum, promising a further withdrawal from part of the West Bank. His government then held back from carrying it out, claiming that the Palestinians were not keeping their side. His coalition collapsed and he lost the 1999 election to Ehud Barak.
The motives of Hamas and Hezbollah
💣 Hamas
Hamas is an Islamist Palestinian group founded in December 1987, in the first Intifada. It wanted an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine, which meant ending Israel, so it rejected Oslo. It also saw the deal as a surrender by Arafat and his party, who were its rivals for the support of Palestinians. It carried out suicide bombings in Israel to wreck the peace process and to win support as the group that still resisted.
⚔️ Hezbollah
Hezbollah is a Shia Islamist group in Lebanon, formed in 1982 after Israel's invasion and backed by Iran. Its first aim was to drive Israel out of the strip of south Lebanon that Israel still occupied. It also rejected Israel's existence and opposed peace talks, so it attacked Israeli forces and fired rockets into northern Israel.
Neither group was part of the Oslo talks, and neither had a reason to stop fighting while Israel remained.
How attacks and settlements slowed the peace process
- Attacks by Palestinian groups. The first Hamas suicide bombings in Israel came in April 1994, after an Israeli settler, Baruch Goldstein, shot dead 29 Muslim worshippers in a mosque in Hebron in February 1994. In February and March 1996 a series of bombs killed more than 50 people. Israelis lost trust in the deal, and the bombings helped Netanyahu to win.
- Israeli action. After the bombings Israel closed its borders to Palestinian workers, which hurt the Palestinian economy and fuelled anger. In April 1996 Israel attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon. During this, shells hit a UN base at Qana where civilians were sheltering and around 100 people died.
- Settlement building. Israeli settlements (Jewish communities built in the occupied territories) on land that the Palestinians wanted for their state kept growing in the 1990s, under both Rabin and Netanyahu. Palestinians saw this as proof that Israel was not serious about giving up land. In 1997 building began on a new Jewish neighbourhood at Har Homa in East Jerusalem, and Palestinians protested.
Each attack made it harder for leaders on the other side to argue for peace, so extremists on both sides got what they wanted.
Change and continuity
What changed: in 1995-96 Israel went from a leader who signed the Accords to one who had opposed them, and violence by opponents of Oslo became a main feature of the process.
What stayed the same: the big disputes of the conflict were still unsolved. The land, Jerusalem, settlements and refugees remained at the heart of it, as they had been since 1948.
Common mistakes
- Saying that an Arab or Palestinian killed Rabin. His killer was an Israeli opponent of Oslo.
- Saying that Netanyahu cancelled Oslo. He kept the agreements but slowed them.
- Mixing up Hamas (Palestinian, in Gaza and the West Bank) and Hezbollah (Lebanese).
- Blaming only one side. Both sides had opponents of peace who used violence or built on disputed land.
Exam-style question
Explain TWO ways in which the attitude of the Israeli government to the Oslo peace process under Netanyahu (1996-99) was different from its attitude under Rabin (1992-95). [6 marks]
Remember: one way on its own can score no more than half marks, and each way must compare both periods.
Model answer
One way was in the willingness to give up land. Under Rabin, Israel signed the Declaration of Principles in 1993 and a second agreement in September 1995 that gave the Palestinian Authority control of Palestinian towns in the West Bank. Under Netanyahu, whose party had opposed Oslo, withdrawals were slow: the army left most of Hebron only in January 1997, and after signing the Wye River Memorandum in 1998 his government held back from carrying it out.
A second way was in how Israel treated violence. Rabin carried on with talks and withdrawals even after Hamas bombings, whereas Netanyahu insisted on reciprocity, saying that Israel would hand over no more land unless the Palestinians stopped attacks, so security became the condition for every step.
This is a top answer because each way compares the two periods and uses precise facts on both sides.
Exam tip
Build each way around a link word such as "whereas" or "but by", with a fact on each side of it, so the comparison is clear.