Spectator's Journal / Whither Rabin?
Lewis, Saul
Whither Rabin? by Saul Lewis 1 n the wake of the Hebron mosque massacre, Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, must be a very angry man. Angry at Dr. Baruch Goldstein, and other followers of the...
...Having been misled time and again by Arafat's soothing assurances, Rabin borrowed a leaf Saul Lewis is the pen name of a longtime Middle East observer...
...Baruch Goldstein, firing away with his assault rifle...
...Did I mention that the dancer has the longest legs in the world...
...It's a long, narrow room with no windows to the outside world...
...from the late Menachem Begin's book, and became a great stickler for details...
...How infinite in faculty...
...I'm at Dulles Airport, barely alive after leaving Foggy Bottom in a huge snowstorm...
...The Israeli government, of course, was aware of this broadcast, but chose to ignore it...
...Q. signed off with no hint at all that • he took me seriously...
...Years ago, Q. met a beautiful exotic dancer in a bar New Orleans while waiting to catch a plane...
...But what is Rabin to do...
...and angry at himself, above all, for agreeing to shake hands with Arafat on the South Lawn of the White House...
...I was thin...
...Never mind that she's about as emotionally mature as a tadpole...
...Tough Love by Benjamin J. Stein 56 The American Spectator April /May 1994...
...And after the Hebron massacre Arafat is proving more slippery than ever...
...Now, he's about to leave his Japanese wife and four children to move in with her...
...But neither does his current strategy of protracted negotiations seem sustainable...
...Curiously, the Israelis who understood this from the start were the dovish Laborites like foreign minister Shimon Peres and his deputy, Yosi Beilin...
...he cannot place any trust in Arafat's assurances and guarantees...
...But whichever way he turns, he seems trapped...
...There was only one thing wrong with this analysis: for Arafat, the handshake was just another maneuver in his ongoing war against Israel...
...I had long hair...
...I was in my glorious 1962 Corvette...
...Now, conscience grows all over me like a spider's web, locking me in, making me walk the line even when I don't want to...
...Before Rabin withdrew the Israeli army from Gaza and Jericho, the precise nature of Palestinian self-rule would have to be laid out in writing...
...If the Labor Party truly intends to establish Palestinian self-rule, say the doves, then the sooner it does so, the better...
...he cannot simply cut and run from the West Bank, leaving over 100,000 Israelis to the tender mercies of the PLO and Hamas...
...Knowing the worth of Arafat's assurances as he does, Rabin couldn't possibly favor such a course...
...That the Hebron massacre sparked widespread riots among them raises the awful prospect of civil strife between Jewish and Arab Israelis somewhere down the road...
...It was swell...
...Ironically, Arafat's position has been gravely complicated by the one Israeli group most sympathetic to his demands: the left...
...I have more faith in [Syrian President] Assad' s word than in Arafat's," he told Israeli newsmen...
...Back at my hotel, I took a long nap, and shed some of the weight of the past...
...Then, I walked past George Washington University, where my eternal wife, or perhaps I should say my eternal flame, went to law school...
...Plus, they're obviously scared to death of the lawyers for the defendants...
...I feel that way particularly in Washington, where so much of my youth was spent...
...I was awakened by a phone call from my pal Q., a very smart forensic accountant in Baltimore...
...She has such a sense of adventure...
...But with the cessation of all settlement activity, time isn't working in Israel's favor on the West Bank anymore...
...Tuesday Ireally don't like this...
...In the aftermath of the massacre, seven out of fifteen members of Israel's cabinet came out in favor of dismantling the Jewish presence in Hebron, but Rabin, fearing that this would give Arafat an opening for further demands, refused to go along...
...What a piece of work is man...
...71 of tough guys I usually work with...
...Arafat would be left with no wiggle-room whatsoever...
...Thus, if Arafat returns to the nego54 The American Spectator April / May 1994 tiations, he will appear less pro-Palestinian than nearly half the Israeli cabinet—hardly a comfortable position for the aging terrorist...
...Everywhere, Arafat and Rabin were praised for burying historic hatreds and building a new Middle East...
...Oh, well...
...he cannot hope to contain mounting West Bank violence indefinitely and prevent it from spilling over into Israel proper...
...Israeli newspapers describe him as someone who is very uncertain, wavering between the hawks and the doves...
...Route 66 was slippery and foggy...
...I nto this devilishly complex situation walked Dr...
...He cannot acknowledge that he deliberately deceived the Israeli public with his campaign pledge never to negotiate with the PLO...
...I'll make this really simple," I said to Q. "You'll regret it if you leave your family...
...mistake, though by now he must surely think so...
...and without progress on either the Palestinian or Syrian front, he cannot suppose that his government, with its razor-thin parliamentary majority, will remain in power for long...
...angry at Yasir Arafat for abandoning the peace talks and making impossible demands on his government...
...Sometimes, when I think of all that's happened, and how it's all past, I know I'm going to die...
...Under these circumstances, Rabin has done what Israelis, alas, often do when they get into trouble: look to the U.S...
...But in the aftermath of the massacre, a terrible situation has gotten much worse...
...I walked past by Lafayette Square, looking down at the Bunny Hutch where the president lives...
...Even before he committed his appalling crime, the mood in West Bank settlements was grim, as Edward Norden pointed out in these pages last month...
...In Shakespeare's words, "If it were done...
...How noble in reason...
...Nothing was to be left to vague "understandings" anymore...
...Rabin has asked Washington to help Israel "accelerate" the peace process...
...God, that must have been almost twenty-four years ago now...
...This is not easy...
...How I wish I could wave a wand and make all of these people into the kind Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu, California...
...Take the doves' advice, obtain some vague assurances from Arafat about demilitarization, and leave the West Bank as quickly as possible...
...The more time passes, the harder it will be to bridge the gap between an "interim" and a final settlement, and the greater the chance that Likud will come to power and upset the whole applecart...
...then 'twere well it were done quickly...
...I was crawling along and still slipping...
...She hasn't spoken to me for almost twenty years, and I have to give her credit for constancy...
...In their view, the longer the peace process drags on, the more radicalized everyone becomes: Palestinians, because their self-confidence is growing...
...Finally, he exploded...
...It was red...
...Washington has replied, predictably, by urging Israel to accelerate the pace of its concessions to the PLO...
...He's going to leave everything that really matters in life for her...
...She's not afraid of anything...
...Not only have relations between Israelis and Palestinians on the West Bank been poisoned, but thekillings appear to have radicalized Israeli Arabs as well—the ones who live in Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Galilee, enjoy Israeli citizenship, and vote in Israeli elections...
...On the other hand, in those days I didn't have a conscience...
...But if Rabin reneges on his pledge to Shas and forcibly removes the Jews from Hebron, he will set off a political firestorm in Israel that could bring down the government...
...I love her," he said...
...All he can do is play for time, pray for a miracle, and ponder the wisdom of Sir Walter Scott: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive...
...To die en route to Dulles...
...This is pitiful...
...Israelis, because their self-confidence is declining...
...Even though it was winter, the day was clear and warm...
...Slowly but surely, then, Rabin is running out of options...
...Then I walked past the famed Presbyterian Church where Truman used to worship, past a townhouse that used to be Brookings long ago, past the building on H Street where my father used to be research director of the Committee for Economic Development, and where I used to be an office boy, past the IMF where my old girlfriend Pat now works...
...Someday soon I'm going to write an article for a men's magazine about why you should not under almost any circumstances leave your wife...
...I'm in law offices in Washington, D.C...
...Baruch Goldstein, and other followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, for bringing shame and disgrace on Israel...
...he cannot admit that his Handshake was a Monday I don't like this at all...
...The historic handshake was hailed the world over as a great breakthrough for peace...
...How is the RTC ever going to get our money back if these are the kind of people who represent them...
...Rabin's strategy helped reassure an Israeli public that was growing increasingly disenchanted with the Handshake, but it had one flaw: pinning down the slippery Arafat is a time-consuming process...
...I'm talking to some lawyers for the RTC who are supposedly prosecuting a lawsuit against some accountants who didn't give a straight count of the assets of a major Drexelweb S&L...
...But they know next to nothing about the subject...
...Unfortunately, peace doesn't depend on Bill Clinton and Warren Christopher, but on Yasir Arafat...
...Chalk up another few hundred million lost to the taxpayers...
...The men and one woman in the room are obviously hard-working lawyers...
...for help...
...Oh boy, I thought...
...The longer the negotiations—and the violence—continue, the greater the likelihood that Israelis will get fed up with the whole business and opt for the opposition...
...Take it from me, it's like shooting the Archduke Franz Ferdinand...
...Did I mention that Q. is middle-aged and has always had too much responsibility...
...And when Arafat failed to live up to his commitments, to annul the PLO's charter, which calls for Israel's destruction, or to call for an end to intifada violence, all sorts of excuses were offered by Israeli spokesmen: Arafat was weak, he was beset by radicals, let's give him time, he's our only hope, etc...
...After the meeting, I walked about fifteen blocks back to my hotel...
...How well I remember, lo these many years ago, driving along Eye Street and seeing a beautiful girl strolling down the street with her law books, only to realize that it was my sainted wife...
...Timidity is a major problem in lawsuits...
...As he made clear in a broadcast to Palestinians on the very day of the handshake, the agreement with Israel was part of the "Phased Plan" adopted by the PLO in 1974: first, establish a foothold in part of "liberated Palestine," then go on to "liberate" the rest of Palestine...
...Instead, he co-opted one of Israel's religious parties, Shas, into his government by promising that no settlements would be evacuated in the foreseeable future...
...It tends to have major consequences not readily foreseeable...
...Yitzhak Rabin went along with this sophistry, but his heart clearly wasn't in it...
Vol. 27 • April 1994 • No. 45
