ABSTRACT
In devoting a separate chapter to Palestinian-Israeli relations since the 1990s, we seek neither to reify nor to isolate this subject. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict was but one of several sources of regional instability during the period, and the launch of the Oslo peace process was far from the only major development in the Middle East of the 1990s. Nevertheless, the rise and fall of the peace process was a momentous occurrence and deserves the careful attention of historians of the modern Middle East. The first agreement in the process, known as Oslo I, was concluded in secret face-to-face meetings between Palestinian and Israeli officials, and its disclosure took the world by surprise. It set the stage for additional steps toward the normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the most important of which was a full treaty of peace and mutual recognition between Jordan and Israel. It led also to the return of Yasir Arafat to Palestine and his assumption of authority over a small portion of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
