Israel and Palestine

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The Issue Of Israel and Palestine

In 1993, in Oslo, Norway a historic peace agreement was secretly drawn up with the hopes of bringing all the violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis to an end. Yasser
Arafat, the chairman of the PLO, and Yitzhak Rabin who was prime minister of Israel at the time shook hands at the White House in front of President Bill Clinton to finalize the accords. This was the first step towards peace in a long time between the warring nations, and one that many people believed was going to bring an end to the fighting. These accords were significant because it was the first time that Israel ever recognized the Palestinian Liberation Organization as representatives of Palestine.
The purpose of Oslo was to pull out all of the Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza, and give the Palestinians the opportunity to govern themselves in that territory. Ariel Sharon was heavily opposed to the Oslo accords because he viewed it as a security threat to Israel to remove their troops from Palestine. Even after the accord was signed, Palestinians were still unhappy, and the violence continued. When Rabin was killed and Sharon took over after he won the election, he ultimately called off the Oslo agreement, and the Israeli army continued to punish Palestine in response to Palestinian attacks. Sharon is in no hurry to reach peace with Palestine, he does not trust t...

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