Peace deals only paper over the issues at the very heart of conflict
As both men were embraced by a smiling President Clinton, we were led to believe we were witnessing the beginning of the end of the world's most intractable conflict.
The front page of the New York Times the following day described the scenes of emotion and bewilderment: "The jaded were awed. Even for a New Age Presidency, there were a lot of men in the audience crying. George Stephanopolous, the Clinton aid, and Rahm Emanuel, the White House adviser who had helped arranged the logistics, were crying. So was the Hollywood contingent Ron Silver and Richard Dreyfuss along with Leon Wieselteir, the literary editor of the New Republic. 'Do you believe this?' Mr Dreyfuss asked Mr Weiseltier. 'And you're the guy who saw those aliens land in that movie,' Mr Wieseltier replied, referring to the actor's role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
Next year also marks the 10th anniversary of the Downing Street Declaration, in which then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and British Prime Minister John Major jointly proclaimed their ambitious aim of fostering "agreement and reconciliation, leading to a new political framework founded on consent and encompassing arrangements within Northern Ireland, for the whole island and between the islands".
The declaration raised as many hopes in Ireland as Arafat and Rabin's handshake had for the Middle East. It led directly to the IRA's cessation of violence in August 1994, which, in turn, prompted jubilant scenes of celebration on the streets of west Belfast and elsewhere.
At the time, critics of either of the two peace processes were thin on the ground, and were generally to be found well outside the confines of mainstream politics and the media (indeed, in the Irish context, this very much remains the case).
To challenge the basis upon which either deal was based was to invite charges of being an enemy of peace or of giving succour to terrorists. But as the Palestine-Israeli conflict descends into greater levels of carnage and violence and the Irish peace process stutters and stumbles interminably from one crisis to another, it is worth re-visiting some of the original arguments of the critics.
With each week now seemingly bringing news of another Palestinian suicide bombing or Israeli atrocity, the optimism inspired by the Oslo Accords has long since been extinguished.
But even as grown men wept on the White House lawn back in 1993 and Arafat and Rabin were being feted as Nobel laureates, others pointed out that far from representing an honourable, fair and courageous compromise, the peace deal, in reality, represented a humiliating capitulation on the part of the Palestinian leadership.
In a post-Cold War environment in which they sensed the geopolitical balance of forces were more stacked against them than ever, Arafat and co could be forgiven for moderating their aims somewhat. But they betrayed their people in concluding a shoddy deal and then trying to portray it as some sort of victory.
The most cogent and prominent of the critics was the Palestinian writer Edward Said. In his book Peace and its Discontents, he wrote that the peace process had brought about a situation where
"Israel has achieved all of its tactical and strategic objectives at the expense of nearly every proclaimed principle of Arab and Palestinian nationalism and struggle. Thus Israel has gained recognition, legitimacy, acceptance from the Arabs without in effect conceding sovereignty over the Arab land, including annexed East Jerusalem, captured illegally by war the Arabs have simply lost the will to resist. They now hope to gain acceptance from the United States and Israel by negotiations begun through an act of abjection that betrayed both the cause of liberation and those people... who sacrificed their lives on its behalf."
Nine years on, Said's gloomy forecasts have been tragically borne out. The peace process has been a political disaster for Palestinians.
Far from achieving statehood, the people of the supposedly autonomous West Bank and Gaza are herded into their enclaves by blockades and Israeli military strangulation. Despite international condemnation of the slaughter at Jenin in April, the Israeli government continues to commit atrocities like last week's air strike in Gaza, described by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "one of our greatest successes", despite the killing of 14 innocent Palestinians.
Social and economic conditions have deteriorated alarmingly. Palestinian communities have continued to be bulldozed to make way for Jewish settlements. Millions of Palestinians still languish in refugee camps in neighbouring states, with no prospect of returning to their homeland.
With, seemingly, no viable alternative available to them to the hopelessly compromised and corrupt rule of Arafat, the extent of Palestinian demoralisation and alienation is measured by the fact that the only form of resistance on offer is an endless cycle of senseless, futile, aimless and self-destructive tit-for-tat killings and suicide bombings.
One of the most insightful, and therefore largely overlooked, books on the origins of the Irish peace process was War and Peace in Ireland: Britain and the IRA in the New World Order, by Mark Ryan.
Writing before the IRA ceasefire of 1994, he noted: "It is possible that Sinn Féin may reach some accommodation with the British government. But any such agreement is unlikely to have a major impact on the underlying issues which gave rise to the conflict in the first place."
With the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, this is effectively what came to pass. Rather than resolving once and for all the crucial issues of sovereignty and democracy that went to the heart of the conflict, the agreement effectively set them aside and put in place a compromise arrangement that tried to square the circles of unionism or nationalism.
Despite the fact the deal comes nowhere close to satisfying the traditional goals of nationalism, the Dublin and London governments have enjoyed a remarkable degree of success in reconciling the republican movement to the reality of British rule in the North, to the extent that they are now involved in administering that rule.
Ironically, it is unionism and loyalism, not republicanism, that have come to represent the greatest threat to the political institutions in the North. The peace process continues to be beset by intermittent crises because it is inherently unstable it offers no final solution, the future remains open-ended and indeterminate. This inflames unionist and loyalist fears and anxieties, which in turn gives rise to murderous sectarianism on the streets and a state of crisis and fragmentation within mainstream unionism.
Ryan foresaw this back in 1994, warning of the dangers of peace deals "which attempt to restructure relationships of conflict without removing the underlying injustices. Such deals will not satisfy popular aspirations for freedom and national rights.
Yet, by destabilising existing arrangements, they may well provoke a backlash from those who have a stake in the status quo." In a year that has witnessed the shameful intimidation of young school girls at Holy Cross primary school, constant rioting in Short Strand, the Ardoyne, Sandy Row and elsewhere, and the loyalist murders of Daniel McColgan and Gerard Lawlor for no other reason than the fact they happened to be Catholic, these words seem more prescient than ever.
The reality is that until a final settlement is reached, the killings and the descent into petty sectarianism will inevitably continue.
President Bush insisted once again last Wednesday that the Good Friday agreement remains the blueprint for peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland. But as it continues to fail to deliver either peace or prosperity, how much longer can the "there is no alternative" argument go unquestioned and unchallenged?
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