To Israeli-government economists, the occupied territories represent gains in trade, such as the 1967 advance right up to the bank of the Suez Canal. To Israeli Labour peacemakers like Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the occupied territories provide the chance for a deal with the nations from whom they were conquered, much in the same way as the 1978-79 Camp David Peace Accords were signed between Israel's Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin and the Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat. Many small factions of Israeli society however, do not share this view, seeing the occupied territories as an unnecessary hinderence. Hence, to most Israelis, the occupied territories are of great significance.
To Palestinians, the occupied territories are of great significance, but many do not see them to be as relevant as others. In this, the Palestinian people can be divided into two groups: the Palestinians in the occupied territories, the traditional Palestinian leadership, and the refugees, and fundamentalist Islamic Palestinian militants. To Palestinians in the occupied territories, who did not flee in 1948 fearing Jewish terrorism, the traditional Palestinian leadership, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and the refugees, those who fled in 1948 to neighbouring Arab countries, particularly Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, the occupied territories are of great significance. The Palestinians in the occupied territories, in this case the West Bank and Gaza Strip, see these territories as their ancestral homes, and therefore most want the IDF and Jewish settlers to withdraw, hence the events of the 1987-92 Intifada uprising. The "PLO team" signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, an agreement to create a de-facto (as opposed to de jure) Palestinian state in Israel, and therefore upholding the possibilities of this agreement are of particular significance to them, if not for themselves, then for their legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian peoples.
