When Peace Prevailed: Handshakes That Changed The World

In 2018, Donald Trump's pictures with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un from Singapore went viral. The two leaders were seen shaking hands which was a moment to be written in history as it was the first ever meeting between a sitting US president and the leader of North Korean. The handshake was an indication of peace on the Korean peninsula.

Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in's historical handshake in April 2018 served as a formal end to the Korean war. The two leaders pledged to work towards total denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and also to sign a peace treaty.?

"We are not people who should be confronting each other, We should be living in unity," the North Korean leader was reported to be saying back then.?

US President Bill Clinton shared the frame with?Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat as the two shook hands in yet another historic moment, back in September 1993. The two leaders had signed the?Israeli-PLO peace accord at the White House.

Palestinian territories were granted autonomy, without the creation of a separate state, and with this, the six-year-long popular Palestinian uprising - the Intifada, came to an end.

Most of us are aware about the Britain-IRA (Irish Republican Army) conflict, which began in the 1960s and is reported to end with the Good Friday agreement in 1998. In 2012, McGuinness,?Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister and former IRA leader, shook hands with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.?

Barak Obama and Raul Castro met at a memorial service held for late South African President Nelson Mandela. Cuba and the US had a history of bitterness and Obama and Castro's handshake in 2013 was the beginning of a friendship. In 2015, full diplomatic relationships between the two countries were restored.?