other areas of study, including postcolonial stud-
ies, literary criticism, gender studies, film studies,
and ethnic studies.
See also arab-israeli conFlicts; arabian
nights; christianity and islam; colonialism; gUlF
Wars; terrorism; Women.
Further reading: Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions
of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Alex-
ander L. Macfie, Orientalism: A Reader (New York: New
York University Press, 2001); Maxime Rodinson, Europe
and the Mystique of Islam. Translated by Roger Veinus
(London: I.B. Taurus, 1988); Edward Said, Orientalism
(1978. Reprint, New York: Random House, 2003).
Osama bin Ladin See Usama bin ladin.
Oslo Accords
The Oslo Accords, or Declaration of Princi-
ples, became the foundational documents for an
attempted peace between israel and the Palestin-
ians in the 1990s. Signed in 1993 by Israel and
the palestine liberation organization (PLO), the
decrees initiated a hopeful era of negotiations, but
they failed ultimately to forge a lasting peace.
Initiated by Norway’s foreign minister, Johan
Jørgen Holst, the negotiations that resulted in the
Oslo Accords were conducted in secret. Signed
privately on August 20, 1993, the world watched
with some disbelief a public handshake of approval
between Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and
the leader of the PLO, yasir araFat, hosted by U.S.
president Bill Clinton on the White House Lawn
on September 13, 1993. By signing the docu-
ments, Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate
representative of the stateless Palestinian people,
and the PLO renounced violence against Israel
and asserted the Jewish state’s right to exist.
The contents of the Oslo Accords served as the
framework for a subsequent transitional period of
rule over the territories of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, occupied by Israel in 1967. In the docu-
ments, Israel agreed to withdraw from parts of the
Occupied Territories, and a newly created Palestin-
ian Authority (PA) assumed self-rule over parts of
the territories in place of the Israeli military. The
West Bank and Gaza Strip were divided into Areas
A, B, and C, with A regions under the control of
the Palestinian Authority, B regions under Pal-
estinian civil and Israeli military control, and C
regions under full Israeli control. The map of these
regions, however, was significantly fragmented;
nevertheless, at the height of the PA’s authority in
the late 1990s, the majority of Palestinians in the
Occupied Territories lived under some form of
Palestinian civil rule.
Many of the most contentious issues of the
Israel-Palestine conflict, including the expansion
of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories,
the issue of the status of JerUsalem, and the fate
of Palestine’s massive refugee population were
purposely left out of the agreement. According
to the Oslo Accords, final status talks, including
issues pertinent to these topics, were to begin no
later than May 1996. However, despite further
diplomatic efforts from 1994 until 2000, the final
status talks promised by the Oslo Accords were
not held. Furthermore, the dissolution of the
Palestinian Authority in the wake of the al-Aqsa
intifada of 2000 and Israel’s dramatic response to
it have rendered the Oslo Accords obsolete.
See also aqsa mosqUe; arab-israeli conFlicts;
reFUgees.
Garay MenicucciFurther reading: William L. Cleveland, A History of the
Modern Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,
2000); Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, The Israel-
Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East
Conflict, 6th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2001).Ottoman dynasty (1299–1922)
The Ottoman dynasty ruled over an empire in the
Middle East and Balkans (southeastern eUrope)K 538 Osama bin Ladin