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The ‘Minnow’ and the ‘Whale’: Norway and the United States in the Peace Process in the Middle East

The signing of the Oslo Agreement on 13 September 1993 revealed to an astonished world the extent to which the small state of Norway had contributed to one of the most serious attempts at reaching peace in the Middle East since the creation of Israel in 1948. ‘It might seem strange and disagreeable to say that the minnow was able to perform the miracles which the whale could not’, admitted the important Oslo actor and now Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) in the aftermath of the negotiations in Norway. Since 1991, the United States had worked hard to achieve peace in the turbulent region. The Cold War had ended. Russia was confronted with huge internal problems and had no longer the capacity to continue a game of rivalry in the Middle East. The United States remained the sole superpower. The Gulf War had left its mark on the region’s political landscape. The majority of Arab states, together with Israel, had supported the US-led war against Iraq. But the PLO had not been part of this new coalition. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s support of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was undoubtedly one of the Palestinian leader’s greatest mistakes. By the end of the war, the PLO was practically bankrupt and had few remaining friends. The Palestinian uprising, starting in 1987, had also marginalized the exiled PLO leaders in Tunis. The intifada had shown that the local Palestinians were capable of fighting the Israeli occupation themselves.