Posted on 08/29/23
| News Source: JPost
As the Israeli government discussed the first of the two Oslo Accords in 1993, then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin admitted that he believed a basic condition of the agreement, Palestinian elections, was unlikely to actually happen, according to the protocol of a cabinet meeting which was declassified on Tuesday.
The cabinet meeting took place on August 30, 1993, about two weeks before the Oslo I Accord (the first of the two agreements making up the Oslo Accords) was signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Washington DC.
The Oslo I Accord, also called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, provided for the establishment of an interim Palestinian government which would eventually lead to a permanent peace agreement. The agreement would be in effect for a transitional period of at most five years.
The agreement stated that free and general elections would have to be held in order to establish a council that would govern Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The council would be given jurisdiction over education, health, social welfare, taxation, and tourism in those areas. Any further issues would be handled in a future agreement.
Rabin told the cabinet that he believed that the chances of Palestinian elections being held and the council actually being formed were "small."