On September 13, 1993, when prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shook the hand of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat, it would have been hard to find anyone who would have dared to predict that 16 years later, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) would set conditions for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On the eve of the festive ceremony at which the Oslo Accords - or, as the document is officially called, the "Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements" - were signed, MK Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium in the Knesset and railed at Rabin that he was worse than Neville Chamberlain.

"We will work with all the legitimate means at the disposal of the opposition in a democracy to put a stop to this foolish process, which is endangering the state's very future," he asserted.

Thirteen years before declaring his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Netanyahu wrote in his book "Fighting Terrorism": "At Oslo, Israel in effect accepted the first stage of the PLO's Phased Plan: a gradual withdrawal to the pre-1967 border and the creation of the conditions for the establishment of a PLO state on its borders." Netanyahu also described Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak, who created the Oslo back channel, as "disconnected academics."

This week, when we met in the office of Yossi Beilin, the behind-the-scenes string-puller in the Oslo process, Hirschfeld allowed himself a gracious smile. "Netanyahu, just like all the other politicians who promised to annul Oslo, honors the principles of the agreement," said Hirschfeld, who heads the Economic Cooperation Foundation and also contributed to the negotiations on the document, drafted in the mid-1990s but never adopted by either side, known as the Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement. He still believes that the Oslo Accords fall into the category of decisions about which the late Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former director of Military Intelligence, wrote: "This is the only solution that will save us from a conflict of religious extremism."

According to Beilin, who at the time of Oslo was the young deputy of then-foreign minister Shimon Peres, and heads the Geneva Initiative organization: "Oslo changed the entire conceptual system of Israeli society. It did to Israel what all the wars, including the trauma of the Yom Kippur War, did not."

Uri Savir, whom Rabin sent to Oslo to conduct the official negotiations with the Palestinian team under Ahmed Qureia, terms the accord "a strategic decision by Zionism to ensure that Israel would remain a democratic Jewish state." Without it, the Arab League would not have put forward its peace initiative of 2002, and it would be far more difficult to enlist the international community in the fight to contain Iran. Like his two colleagues, Savir is convinced that "Oslo is not dead" and that in the end, the final-status agreement, whatever its components, will be based on the map of the three zones set forth in Oslo II and on its security concept. "Oslo is alive and well," he sums up.

Savir, who like Beilin is involved today in commercial business affairs as well in the business of peace (he is president of the Peres Center for Peace), is certain that had it not been for the vision that engendered the Oslo Accords, the settlements in the West Bank would have brought about what he terms "the Greater Israel nightmare." But Rabin was absolutely unwilling to add to the agreement any sort of commitment regarding the settlements. The Palestinians had to plead with Savir back then to give them an official copy of the cabinet resolution to freeze the settlements (in order to get guarantees from the United States that would enable Israel to raise money to absorb immigrants from the former Soviet Union).

In retrospect, Savir adds, he is sorry that the agreement made it possible for the settlers to strike ever deeper roots in the territories (their population grew from 110,000 in 1993 to about 300,000 today). "That left a big hole for the continuation of the 'Israbluff' [i.e., a deceptive] approach, and also eroded the Palestinians' trust," Savir notes. "We should have insisted on a freeze even at the price of a confrontation with the settlers." He believes that Rabin missed an opportunity to remove the Hebron settlers in the wake of Baruch Goldstein's massacre of Muslim worshipers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs there in February 1994.

Despite the natural and not-so-natural growth in the settlements, the Oslo Accords brought Israel some degree of normalization with Arab states, a topic that is so much in the news today. In this neighborhood, as in the world at large, the prevailing view was that Rabin wanted to defer the confrontation with the settlers until the final-status stage. Beilin has no doubt that had it not been for the confidence of King Hussein that Rabin sincerely wanted to end the occupation, Israel would still not have a peace agreement with Jordan. (That agreement was signed 13 months after the agreement with the PLO.) Nor would the Gulf states have rushed to allow Israel to open legations on their soil. It is also very doubtful that the Vatican would have signed (in December 1993) an agreement to establish full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Many important states, including Turkey and Greece, upgraded their relations with Jerusalem, and many large international corporations that for years had been deterred by the Arab boycott opened offices in Tel Aviv.

The possibility of renewing the negotiations with the Palestinians returns to the fore the debate between those who support interim agreements, and the camp that advocates a comprehensive final settlement. Already at the beginning of 1993, when the contacts with the Palestinians were still in their infancy, Beilin and Hirschfeld proposed to Peres a five-year plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The first stage was a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, so that an international trusteeship regime could be created there. Had it been up to them, Rabin and Peres would have signed an agreement demarcating the permanent border between Israel and a Palestinian state on September 13, 1993, and would have found solutions also for the issues of Jerusalem and the refugees.

Beilin rejects the argument that interim agreements fulfill an important role by enabling a trial period in which mistakes can be corrected. He cites a study showing that the divorce rate for couples who live together before marriage is higher than for those who do not. Hirschfeld says that interim agreements allow time for negotiations on a permanent arrangement, as long as there is a fixed timeline. Savir maintains that at the time there was also no Palestinian partner for talks on a permanent settlement. Arafat, like Rabin and Peres, preferred to take things one step at a time, in the hope that the process and time would affect public opinion.

Oslo taught the three that Israeli politicians are susceptible to inordinate influence from the military on foreign-policy decisions. "That's what created the illogical and idiotic thing known as areas A, B and C," Beilin says, referring to the accords' division of the West Bank into areas under full Palestinian control, full Israel control, and combined Palestinian-civil and Israeli-security control, respectively.

Savir: "We were too heavy-handed with security and we were unaware of its effect on poverty and terrorism in the territories." The lesson: "The Foreign Ministry, not the defense establishment, should take the lead in these processes." But he too is unsparingly critical of Arafat for failing to make an effort to create proper institutions and to fight extremist groups such as Hamas.

Hirschfeld recalls that on the day after the Oslo Accords were signed, Rabin's public approval rating soared to more than 90 percent. A year later, after a long string of terror attacks, his popularity had plummeted to 22 percent. "Both sides failed to deliver the goods," he says. "We didn't give [the Palestinians] free passage in the territories and they didn't give us security." His lesson: Without a fundamental change in the situation on the ground, a final-status arrangement is impossible.

The Oslo negotiations were a first attempt to reach an agreement between Israel and an Arab party without active third-party involvement, meaning the United States. Norway was asked to provide hospitality, after the Americans informed Beilin in December 1992 that an act of Congress prohibited them from holding direct contacts with the PLO. Beilin believes Oslo proves that Israel and the Arabs can reach agreements without mediators or imposed settlements. And international aid poured in only after the two sides signed the agreement. If the two parties are reluctant to pay the price of compromise, a third party can at best lead them to the well.

All three agree that the Achilles heel of the Oslo process was not a lack of will or even the weakness of any particular clause, but rather flaws in implementation and domestic opposition in both Jerusalem and Ramallah. They admit that although they were able to shatter the collective dream of Greater Israel, they lost the battle for public opinion. The opponents' campaign, which employed such slogans as "Oslo criminals" and "Why did you give them guns?" - culminating in Rabin's assassination, returned Likud to power the first time. The farce of Camp David II returned the right to power a second time, while the second intifada wiped out the peace camp.

Beilin, the Oslo prophet-turned-businessman, is convinced that the bad luck will come to an end when the accords become the peace treaty with the Palestinians. If Netanyahu decides to follow this route, he will enjoy a great advantage: The head of the opposition will not accuse him of being "worse than Chamberlain."