How Oslo's handshake became the world's most expensive photo-op

Remember that iconic photograph of September 1993?

- By C. A. Saliya

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shaking hands on the White House lawn while President Bill Clinton beamed between them like a proud father at a wedding.

The world watched and thought: "Finally, Shantiya (peace) is possible." That iconic 1993 handshake on the White House lawn—Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat clasping hands while Bill Clinton beamed like a proud parent—was supposed to be the beginning of Middle East peace. Instead, it became the most over-promised underdeliver in diplomatic history. Three decades later, the Oslo Accords have delivered neither the Palestinian state nor Israeli security they promised, but they've certainly delivered plenty: more settlements, more violence, more broken promises, and a peace process that exists mainly in the nostalgia of ageing diplomats. The handshake cost Nobel Prizes, billions in international aid, countless lives, and—most expensively—the credibility of anyone who still believes that photo-ops can substitute for political will. Oslo didn't fail because peace was impossible; it failed because both sides treated it as a starting gun for a race to create facts on the ground rather than a roadmap to compromise. The real question isn't whether Oslo was a mirage—it's how long we'll keep pretending we see water in the desert.

Thirty years later, that handshake looks less like a breakthrough and more like the world's most expensive publicity stunt. As we traced in our previous column, the Palestine-Israel conflict was born from a century of broken promises and double-dealing. But the Oslo period represents something even more tragic: the systematic destruction of hope itself.

When Australia announced its recognition of Palestinian statehood last month, it wasn't celebrating a peace breakthrough—it was performing the last rites over the corpse of the two-state solution.

The Oslo Mayava (Illusion): 1993-1995