right to exist in peace, which was the first of the PLO's obligations under the Oslo Accords. In Yasser Arafat's 9 September 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, as part of the first Oslo Accord, Arafat stated that "The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." These remarks from Arafat was seen as a shift from one of the PLO's previous primary aims—the destruction of Israel. However, during the 1990s and 2000s the PLO leadership has stated that it considered any peace with Israel was to be temporary until the dream of Israel's destruction could be realized. Arafat often spoke of the peace process in terms of "justice" for the Palestinians; terms historian Efraim Karsh described as "euphemisms rooted in Islamic and Arabic history for the liberation of the whole of Palestine from 'foreign occupiers.'" When describing his views of the peace process among Arab leaders and in the media of the Arab world, Arafat's rhetoric became noticeably more bellicose than it was when among Western leaders and media outside of the Arab world. The period saw a disconnect between what the PLO's second in command Abu Iyad referred to as "the language of peace" and support of Palestinian terrorism. Since the 1990s, there has been a debate within the PLO as to whether to halt terrorist activities completely or to continue attacking Israel as well as negotiate diplomatically with Israel. In practice, terrorism was never fully banned. Furthermore, assassination attempts by radical Palestinian factions within the PLO since the early years of the peace process kept Arafat from expressing full, public support of the peace process or condemnation of terrorism without risking further danger to his own life. In 2000, after Yasser Arafat rejected the offer made to him by Ehud Barak based on a two-state solution and declined to negotiate for an alternative plan, it became clear that Arafat would not make a deal with Israel unless it included the full Palestinian right of return, which would demographically destroy the Jewish character of the State of Israel. For this reason, critics of Arafat claim that he put his desire to destroy the Jewish state above his dream of building an autonomous Palestinian state. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad The stated goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is to conquer Israel and replace it with an