Oslo II

Oslo II, formally the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, was signed in Washington, D.C. on 28 September 1995 by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, with U.S. President Bill Clinton, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Hussein, and Russian and EU representatives as witnesses. It built on the 1993 Declaration of Principles (Oslo I) and the 1994 Gaza–Jericho Agreement.

The accord's central innovation was the territorial partition of the West Bank into three administrative zones:

• Area A — full Palestinian Authority (PA) civil and security control, covering major Palestinian population centers such as Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Bethlehem, and (later) most of Hebron.
• Area B — Palestinian civil control with shared or Israeli security responsibility, covering most Palestinian villages.
• Area C — full Israeli civil and security control, encompassing Israeli settlements, military zones, and most of the territory by land area.

Oslo II also established the elected Palestinian Legislative Council (first elections held January 1996), set rules for the redeployment of Israeli forces, created joint patrols and liaison mechanisms, and addressed water, electricity, economic relations, and the release of Palestinian prisoners. It explicitly deferred so-called "final status" issues — Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, borders, and security arrangements — to later negotiations meant to conclude within five years.

The agreement was politically costly: Rabin was assassinated on 4 November 1995 by an Israeli extremist opposed to the accords. Implementation proceeded unevenly under subsequent governments. The Hebron Protocol (1997) and Wye River Memorandum (1998) addressed parts of the redeployment, but the final-status timetable collapsed after the 2000 Camp David Summit and the outbreak of the Second Intifada. The Area A/B/C framework, though designed as transitional, remains the operative administrative map of the West Bank decades later.