On September 13, 1993, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House South Lawn and signed the Oslo I Accord, a pivotal moment that signified the start of a transformation in Israel’s relations with the Palestinians and, by extension, with the Arab world at large. Three decades later, that transformation remains unrealized and current trends in the Israeli-Palestinian arena threaten to undermine Oslo’s achievements entirely. Nonetheless, opportunities may exist in 2023 that proved elusive in 1993. While once Israeli-Palestinian peace was seen as the prerequisite to Israel’s normalization with the Arab and Muslim world, now the Biden administration is reportedly seeking to leverage normalization as a catalyst for progress toward a two-state outcome.
In this Israel Policy Briefing, we talked with New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman, who has written extensively about the Biden administration’s efforts to broker a Saudi-Israel normalization deal that would require meaningful Israeli concessions on the Palestinian issue. The conversation reflected on the Oslo era and analyzed today’s challenges and opportunities regarding Israel’s place in the Middle East.