JERUSALEM ¨C As Palestinians prepare to lower the flag over their shuttered mission in Washington, no one can predict when they will return to the city where just a quarter of a century ago a diplomatic triumph was celebrated on a sunlit White House lawn.
Hosted by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton, Palestinian and Israeli leaders came together on Sept. 13, 1993, to sign the first of the Oslo Accords, designed to be the foundation of a permanent peace deal within five years that would create two states, side-by-side.
The three men who would win the Nobel Peace Prize the next year ¡ª Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat ¡ª did not live to see peace in their time.
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