Exactly 25 years ago you, secretly, came to my office in Tel Aviv to celebrate the end of an almost two-year effort on a draft for a Palestinian-Israeli permanent agreement. The two negotiators on your side were Hussein Agha and Ahmed Khalidi; my representatives were Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak. We raised a toast with orange juice, because you never drink alcohol.
You were very excited about the fact that for the first time, a detailed plan for peace, accompanied by maps, was agreed upon by Israelis and Palestinians. I promised to show it to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in whose Cabinet I served as minister for economy and planning. You promised to show it to President Yasser Arafat. A few days later, Rabin was assassinated, and the plan was shelved by his successor, Shimon Peres. Our joint paper, known as the Beilin-Abu Mazen Agreement, became the cornerstone of all the following peace plans, from the Clinton Parameters of 2000 to the very problematic Trump plan of 2020.
