1991 - Madrid conference - Co-sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union, this was designed to follow up the 1978 Egypt-Israel treaty by encouraging other Arab countries to sign their own agreements with Israel. Jordan, Lebanon and Syria were invited as well as Israel and Egypt. The Palestinians were also represented, but as part of a joint delegation with Jordan and not by Yasser Arafat or other leading figures in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, to whom the Israelis objected. The conference eventually led to a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in 1994.

1993 - Oslo Accords - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin negotiated the first meaningful agreement between Palestinians and Israelis at Oslo in 1993. The agreement called for mutual recognition and a five-year transitional period leading to a definitive peace agreement. Although it resulted in the creation of a Palestinian Authority with some of the powers of an independent state, the Oslo agreement was vague, Israel continued its settlement building programme apace, and the deal eventually broke down amid mutual recriminations and an explosion of violence in the al-Aqsa intifada of 2000.