TIME Person of the Year: A Photo History, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin

ARAFAT BY BARRY IVERSON; RABIN BY CYNTHIA JOHNSON

Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin joined Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk as the 1993 Men of the Year

"We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who have attended their funerals and cannot look in the eyes of their parents; we who have come from a land where parents bury their children; we who have fought against you, the Palestinians — we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough."

— Yitzhak Rabin, after signing the 1993 peace agreement

Rabin and Arafat signed the historic Oslo agreement in September 1993 to place the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, and eventually the rest of the West Bank, under Palestinian rule. As Rabin stated in an interview with TIME when the magazine named Rabin and Arafat Men of the Year for 1993 (1/3/94), "I've said more than once in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, we make peace, or we negotiate meaningful steps towards peace, with enemies. Sometimes bitter enemies."

Rabin and Arafat were seen as strong national leaders, but both men faced fierce opposition to their peace efforts. "Peace is not yet a fact between the Israelis and the Palestinians," noted TIME. "But Rabin and Arafat are Men of the Year because they have taken those meaningful steps from which it will be difficult to turn back. The idea of peace, once planted, is a powerful incentive to two peoples who have lost so many lives, so much time, so much prosperity in bloody wars."