Spectator's Journal: Peace Out: Israel After Rabin

Shattan, Joseph

"Spectator's Journal: Peace Out: Israel After Rabin" by Joseph Shattan Peace Out Sometimes small, seemingly insignificant quirks or gestures can provide a window into a person's soul. In Yitzhak Rabin's case, it was his famous...

...But Rabin acted like a politician eager to win at any price, rather than like someone who understands that, on the really big issues, how you win matters more than whether you win...
...Today, an Israeli Arab gynecologist, Ahmed Tibi, serves as Arafat's political adviser, and Israeli ministers regularly urge that more money be spent on Israeli Arabs so as not to lose that community's loyalty entirely...
...Eventually, one very angry Israeli gunned Rabin down...
...The negotiations were bearing fruit...
...yet no agreement was in sight, the intifada (Palestinian uprising) was raging, and life in Israel was becoming intolerable...
...Those words were written in 1986 — a year before the outbreak of the intifada that radicalized them even further—yet even then it was clear to O'Brien that Israel's Arabs (close to zo percent of Israel's total population) had the same relationship to Israel that the Sudetenland Germans had to Czechoslovakia in the 1930's...
...asked the wily Peres...
...A recent poll by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies in Nablus shows that 46 percent of Palestinians support armed attacks against Israel, with only 34 percent opposed to such attacks...
...Under Rabin, Israeli society grew increasingly polarized and angry...
...Other polls are even more disheartening, and strongly suggest that the peace process is not furthering Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation...
...instead of discrediting the left, he has enabled it to occupy the high moral ground...
...So Rabin's great gamble—an agreement with the PLO to be followed by peace with Syria—had failed, and not even the peace agreement with Jordan, or the breakthroughs with Qatar and Oman, could make up for that failure...
...Now what...
...In the wake of Oslo I, terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians escalated dramatically: In the fifteen months after the Rabin-Arafat handshake, 123 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists, compared to 67 killed in the fifteen months prior to the agreement...
...But the legitimacy of Assad's regime rests on its self-professed role as leader of the Arab crusade against Israel...
...Rabin's initial doubts about the peace process would go unmentioned...
...Under these circumstances, it's not surprising that even secular Israelis with no particular religious or emotional attachment to the West Bank oppose the withdrawal on security grounds...
...Instead of ending the peaceprocess, he has endowed it with new life...
...It was as though, even while smiling—or trying to smile—he could not let go of his basic sadness...
...In the case of the Palestinians, it is virtually a foregone conclusion that foreign aid will only serve to solidify the corrupt rule of Arafat and his cronies...
...It allowed the most fateful question facing Israel today, the ultimate disposition of the West Bank, to be decided by the Arab members of the Knesset...
...And all those who question the wisdom of going ahead with the peace process would be tarred with Rabin's murder...
...That way, they argued, the average Palestinian will acquire a stake in peace, and will set aside his murderous passions in exchange for a steady job and a rising income...
...The American Spectator • January 1996 49 Mrs...
...Secretary of State Christopher, or even President Clinton, prostrated themselves before the Syrian dictator...
...After reaching the agreement, Arafat promptly told the non-PLO delegates to get lost, which they did...
...Rabin, in other words, was moving to the left, but Israel was moving to the right...
...He was wrong, of course...
...Like him, they could not forget their terrible yesterdays...
...He blamed Israel's growing disenchantment with his policies on Israel's largest opposition party, the Likud, which Rabin began to equate, in his public statements, with Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group...
...A more statesmanlike leader would have said at the outset of the vote that, given the incredibly high stakes involved, passage of Oslo II required a supermajority, — say, eighty members of the Knesset instead of sixty-one...
...Though Rabin and his American allies tried desperately44 Rabin was moving to the left, but Israel was moving to the right...
...Rabin's efforts to force the pace of the peace process backfired...
...Rabin had been in office for nine months and his popularity had dropped sharply...
...The first law of politics is that, when you find yourself in a hole, you must stop digging—which is precisely what Israel's president, the very dovish Ezer Weizman, urged Rabin to do...
...Rabin and Peres indirectly acknowledged the reality of widespread Palestinian hostility to Israel...
...As Conor Cruise O'Brien wrote in The Siege, his superb history of the conflict, "The Arab population of Israel constitutes that part of the besieging forces which is actually installed inside the citadel...
...In fact, that is precisely what the Rabin government did...
...That Israeli leaders should bet their nation's future on such a bizarre theory is really not that surprising, given Israel's own great dependence on foreign aid...
...to 59...
...44 SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference 50 January 1996 • The American Spectator...
...A politically desperate Rabin gave his belated consent, and so, without the knowledge of Israel's cabinet and without any input from the military or intelligence services, the agreement with the PLO known as the Declaration of Principles, or Oslo I, was finalized...
...As is so often the case, then, with political assassinations, Rabin's murderer has achieved exactly the opposite of what he intended...
...The real question now is what the West Bank's Palestinian inhabitants feel...
...In contemplating withdrawal from the West Bank, the operative question is not what Arafat says, or even what he really believes in his heart of hearts...
...Yet Rabin felt that, all things considered, Israel had to do something to break the Arab-Israeli impasse...
...Rabin, however, could not possibly admit—even to himself—that he had failed so dismally...
...When Oslo II came before the Knesset, Israel's parliament, it passed by the slimmest of margins: 61...
...Casting all his doubts aside, he concluded Oslo II—an agreement between Israel and the PLO reached last September, whereby Israel promised to cede control of most Arab-populated cities in the West Bank to the PLO...
...To make matters even worse, the PLO, which had promised to forego violence and renounce the clause in its National Charter calling for Israel's destruction, wasn't living up to its commitments: The Charter remained unchanged, and Palestinian authorities either couldn't or wouldn't clamp down on terrorism...
...Having begun the process by warning that Arafat's failure to live up to his commitments would result in its reversal ("The wheel can always be turned back"), he continued it, despite PLO violations, by arguing that there was "no alternative...
...SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL by Joseph Shattan Peace Out Sometimes small, seemingly insignificant quirks or gestures can provide a window into a person's soul...
...He had his doubts about the whole business, and he did not go especially out of his way to conceal them...
...To understand how Israel got itself into such a god-awful mess, you have to go back to March 1993...
...Unlike his foreign minister and successor Shimon Peres, Rabin didn't seem too enthusiastic about the Declaration of Principles that he and PLO chief Yasir Arafat signed in Washington on September 13, 1993...
...Even as the funeral honored his statesmanship, the Israeli left's strategy for recasting his legacy was emerging...
...like him, they both believed and disbelieved in a better tomorrow...
...Ambivalence was, at least initially, also the hallmark of Rabin's attitude toward the peace process...
...The man who seemed to embody Israel's soul inadvertently destroyed its most precious asset—the unity of its people...
...What really underlies the peace process, then, is a kind of blind faith in the power of foreign aid to transform deeply-held political attitudes...
...They were very, very violent in their expressions...
...Although it is very politically incorrect to say so, Israel's Arab citizens— the ones who live in Israel proper, not the West Bank or Gaza —increasingly identify with the PLO and Hamas, not Israel...
...In this, too, he mirrored the soul of his nation...
...He could not accept the fact that he and his people were no longer on the same wavelength...
...Enter Shimon Peres, who disclosed to Rabin that, unknown to the prime minister and in violation of Israeli law, a group of Israelis, connected to Peres protégé Yossi Beilin, had been conducting negotiations with PLO representatives in Oslo since Labor's victory in the summer of 1992...
...Rabin's angry recriminations have been quickly taken up by the Israeli left—and its "amen corner," the American press—which seems to regard Rabin's assassination as a stick with which to beat its right-wing opponents, rather than as a national tragedy that calls for soul-searching and repentance...
...Rabin couldn't have cared less about their aspirations, but, as he later indicated in newspaper interviews, he was haunted by Yitzhak Rabin extended an olive branch to Syria and the PLO, and it cost him his life...
...If you ever heard their speeches at the Knesset, you would understand what I mean...
...77 to conceal it, the plain fact was that Rabin's whole policy lay in shambles...
...For even if Rabin was right and Arafat has changed, a bullet could end his life just as easily as it ended Rabin's, or Sadat's, or King Hussein's grandfather's...
...usually, the right side of his mouth would curl up just a bit, but the left side remained immobile...
...An agreement with the PLO was the key to an agreement with Syria, and an agreement with Syria, in turn, was the key to Israel's long-term security...
...But Israelis are a funny people: When you push them, they have a tendency to push back...
...Rabin almost never smiled fully...
...The left is now very much in the saddle in Israel, and since it clearly intends to use its newly-acquired moral capital to push through a policy that most Jewish Israelis simply do not support, it doesn't take a prophet to figure out that Israel's time of troubles has just begun...
...Having failed to live up to his commitments under Oslo I, a presumably-chastened Arafat would be rewarded with further cpncessions...
...The great irony of Rabin's assassination is that, if the world were a rational place, it would immediately be seen as a powerful argument against rushing ahead with the peace process...
...Rabin, referring to the Likud party...
...Yes, surely I blame them," said a grieving Mrs...
...Israel grew more skeptical then ever...
...Given the hostility of Israel's Arabs, he wrote, "It seems unlikely that the besieged will ever allow the resident section of the besiegers a decisive voice in the conduct of the defense of Israel...
...Should they be continued...
...Immediately after Rabin and Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, Israeli and American leaders began an intensive courtship of Syria's President Assad, culminating in an Israeli promise to leave virtually the entire Golan Heights if only the Syrian dictator made peace with Israel...
...As one student would later comment, "Someone had better find a way to create a sense of unity, or everything will fall apart...
...Moreover, the sixty-one votes in favor of the accord included five votes from Arab Knesset members...
...During the election campaign he had promised to conclude an agreement with the Palestinians within six to nine months of coming intooffice...
...instead of putting down his shovel, he began digging even faster...
...Yet O'Brien made one mistake...
...Besides, peace with Israel would antagonize Iran, a vital ally in Syria's effort to isolate its arch-rival, Iraq...
...Rabin chose to recognize the PLO, even though, while campaigning for office, he had vowed never to do so...
...Were he to renounce that crusade and make peace with Israel, even on the most favorable (to him) of terms, Assad's rule could be undermined...
...Yet even in Israel's case, a very powerful argument can bemade that, on balance, foreign aid has set back Israeli prospects for economic development...
...Rabin broke his vow because he bought into the Israeli left's line that the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict was the Palestinian problem...
...The leader who had only recently overcome his own reservations about the peace process was now determined to shove that process down the Israeli public's throat...
...48 January 1996 • The American Spectator the thought that if Israel and Syria did not sign a peace treaty, sooner or later Syrian missiles, armed with chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons, would rain down on Tel Aviv...
...Hence, despite tantalizing hints to the contrary, Assad steadfastly refused to take Rabin's bait, no matter how many times U.S...
...As the peace process unfolded, however, a strange thing happened: Rabin's initial skepticism gave way to almost unqualified enthusiasm, even as the rest of JOSEPH SHATTAN is consulting editor for The American Spectator...
...From all indications, their attitude to Israel has in no way mellowed...
...According to this view, Israel would never succeed in making peace with its Arab neighbors until it had first satisfied the national aspirations of the Palestinians...
...Yet he could not accept the fact that he and his people were no longer on the same wavelength...
...Maybe that's why so many Israelis loved him—they identified with his ambivalence...
...Toward the end of his life, he grew increasingly angry and intolerant...
...In Yitzhak Rabin's case, it was his famous half-smile that appeared to define him...
...he would be canonized as a consistent and unwavering champion of peace...
...Eventually, he seems to have convinced himself that his strategy was working, and that Arafat—as Rabin told Kissinger shortly before his murder—had changed...
...Rabin was then faced with a wrenching dilemma: Either recognize the PLO openly, or forget about any political solution to the intifada...
...For the peace process to succeed, they repeatedly emphasized, the West, and especially the United States, will have to promote economic development in the West Bank and Gaza through a massive foreign aid program...
...But Rabin would not slow down the peace process...
...The curious thing is that while negotiating secretly with the PLO in Norway, Rabin believed that when the time came to go public, the PLO would graciously step aside and allow a non-PLO delegation in Washington to actually sign the accords...
...So intensive was this courtship that one almost had the feeling that Assad and his Soviet patrons had won the Cold War, and that Israel and its American patron were desperately suing for terms...
...Without Arab help, Oslo II would have been rejected outright...

Vol. 29 • January 1996 • No. 1


 
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