That ceremony was an act of political theater unsurpassed in the history of Israel. Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, and architect of modern terrorism, grinned ear to ear as he received the royal treatment on the White House Lawn.

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Seeking peace, Israel's then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin promised the PLO land, money and weaponry, which Arafat used to build a terror state on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Arafat in turn promised to end terrorism, accept Israel's right to exist and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. Arafat was lying.

I wanted to believe in the fake peace of 1993. But the grim facts made it impossible. For the past 27 years, first as a member of Israel's negotiating team during my service in the IDF and then as a writer and a lecturer, like thousands of other Israelis and friends of Israel in the US and around the world, I devoted myself to exposing the lies and warning about the danger of empowering those who seek Israel's destruction. I wrote hundreds of articles, briefed hundreds of politicians and community leaders in the US and worldwide. I wrote a book.

And as I sat in the garden at the White House today, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Mahyan and Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani standing in the portico before me, the names of the victims of that previous peace agreement rushed through my head. David Biri, Nachson Waxman, Kochava Biton, Ohad Bachrach, Ori Shachor, the Lapids, the Ungars, the Fogels, the Schijveschuurders, Madhat Yusuf, Shalhevet Pas and on and on and on.

I have been demonized as an "extremist" a "far right-winger," an "enemy of peace," and a "fascist" by members of the so-called "peace camp." Think tanks and professionals with ties to the EU – the co-sponsor of the fake peace process – were afraid to invite me to speak, cite my articles or to review my book.

Now, 27 years and two days later, the Palestinians are outside the White House with Israeli "peace activists" protesting the peace ceremony at the White House. The EU is boycotting the peace ceremony. And sitting in the audience with me are politicians and leaders like Zionist Organization of American President Mort Klein; Senator Ted Cruz; radio host Mark Levin and former presidential candidate and Evangelical leader Gary Bauer whom I met with over the past decades to discuss the dangers of fake peace for Israel, for the United States and for prospects for true peace ever being achieved between Israel and the Arab world. Like me, they were devoted to ending the lie that peace is possible with people who justify the murder of innocent Israelis as a form of "legitimate resistance." They too were reviled by the "peace camp" for speaking the truth.

Many of the guests made great efforts to come to the White House even in the midst of the global pandemic because it is clear that that this peace is something else. As people like Mossad director Yossi Cohen have said, it only seems like this event happened suddenly. It didn't. It is the outgrowth of years of work by dedicated officials from all sides who quietly and carefully cultivated ties based not on lies but on real common interests and common concerns. The UAE, Bahrain and Israel have come together because of the courageous leadership of President Donald Trump and his advisors who were willing to acknowledge the reality on the ground and listen to the voices those who opposed what happened at the White House 27 years ago. Trump and his team were willing to break ranks with generations of American policymakers who insisted that terrorists are the true peacemakers, the road to peace is appeasement, and those who look for mutual respect, human decency and shared interests as the basis of peace are right-wing warmongers.

This peace is not a function of Netanyahu changing his tune as his Likud predecessors Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and others did, and joining the chorus of the fake peace camp. This peace owes to Netanyahu staying true to the core truths that stood at the root of the anti-Oslo protests. You cannot make peace with people who justify your murder and seek your destruction. You can only make peace with those who accept you as you are for what you are.

This peace is real peace. It is a peace to celebrate and cultivate. It is a peace based on respecting, and missing and loving and never forgetting the victims of the political theater that happened here 27 years ago. Where this peace will lead is unclear. The sky is the limit. But unless something goes terribly wrong, it will not lead to more Jewish victims of fake peace.

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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 – Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat – did not live to see peace in their time.

Now, with relations between U.S. President Donald Trump and the Palestinians, who see him as an unquestioning ally of right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, at a breaking point, the Oslo deal seems like a relic from a bygone age.

As if to drive home the flaws inherent in Oslo's original Declaration of Principles, 25 years later it is the very issues that were postponed for later resolution that are now dominating the headlines once again.

They include the status of Jerusalem – claimed by both sides as their capital – the fate of millions of Palestinian refugees from wars dating to 1948, Israeli settlements on occupied land that Palestinians want for a state, mutually acceptable security arrangements, and the issue of agreed borders.

"I believe now that Oslo is dead," said Yasser Abed Rabbo, who was among the tiny circle of Palestinian politicians entrusted by Arafat with the secret that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had begun meeting in Norway in 1992.

Now 73, Abed Rabbo concedes his side made mistakes. Now, few even talk of a peace process. Last month, support for a two-state solution fell to 43% among Israeli Jews and Palestinians in one opinion poll, the weakest in almost two decades of joint Palestinian-Israeli survey research.

"We should not mourn a ghost," Abed Rabbo said. "We should have a new strategy – not to abandon the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people, not to abandon the right to build our own independent state, but to try to find ways and means to reach that goal different from the ways and means that we have used in the past."

But Yossi Beilin, one of the Israeli negotiators in the Oslo talks, said the parameters of a final agreement are well-known.

"It shouldn't take too long, once the right people are in their positions, to cut a deal," Beilin, said.

"Trump is not a game-changer – he is a spoiler ... but he will not be there forever. And I believe that it is eventually, as it was in Oslo, up to the parties. If we and the Palestinians want to make peace, we will make peace."

Early challenges 

The early hope of peace shattered quickly after Rabin and Arafat awkwardly shook hands on the South Lawn of the White House.

Two years later, Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli ultra-nationalist opposed to peace policies that had already been tested by the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers by a Jewish settler in the West Bank city of Hebron, and by suicide bombings by the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups that killed 77 civilians and soldiers in Israel.

Over the years, peacemaking became mired in accusations of broken promises on both sides and more attacks by Palestinian terrorists and continued settlement expansion by Israel.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014. Trump has pledged a "deal of the century" to end the decades-old conflict, but his administration has given no date for the proposal's rollout.

For his part, Netanyahu has said that any future Palestinian state must be demilitarized and must recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people – conditions that Palestinians say show he is not sincere about peacemaking.

And Palestinians fumed when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December and moved the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv in May.

Both steps led the Palestinian leadership to boycott Washington's peace efforts spearheaded by Jared Kushner, Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law.

Further moves saw the Trump administration withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the U.N. refugee agency dealing with Palestinians and to hospitals in East Jerusalem, and the order to close the Palestine Liberation Organization's mission in Washington, which opened in 1994.

In Gaza, ruled by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas since 2007, two years after Israeli soldiers and settlers withdrew, one of the group's senior leaders, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, said the Oslo deal was not a peace pact but "100% surrender" for the Palestinians.

Lucy Bar-On, a 60-year-old Israeli nurse, said the failure to move forward along the peace path charted by the interim agreements only emboldened hardliners: "They won, the extremists on the Israeli side and those on the Palestinian side."

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