Rabin's Assassin Inadvertently Strengthened Desire for Peace

By Rachelle Marshall

Nothing in his life became him like leaving it. — Macbeth, Act I, Scene IV

Middle East scholars may have a hard time assessing the impact of Yitzhak Rabin's untimely death last Nov. 4. They will have to determine whether the assassination caused the loss of a courageous architect of peace whose presence was essential to achieving an end to hostility between Israel and the Palestinians, or whether it removed from the peace process a reluctant participant, whose abiding aim was permanent Israeli control of the West Bank.

To most Israelis and Americans the answer was clear: In both countries there was an outpouring of grief for a lost hero, a man who literally had given his life for the cause of peace with the Palestinians. Tens of thousands of Israelis brought candles and flowers to his grave or to the site of his murder, turning the tough soldier once characterized by his iron-fist policies into an instant saint. Their veneration was understandable—many Israelis yearn for peace, and Rabin had died only a few minutes after joining an enormous crowd in singing a popular peace anthem. Almost his last spoken words were: "I believe now there is a chance for peace, a great chance, and we must take advantage of it..."

But despite the sentiments Rabin expressed at the end, Oslo I and II did not provide for the peaceful coexistence of equals but for a system of apartheid so complete that Palestinians will even be forced to use separate roads. Oslo II gives Palestinians control over only six small cities excluding Hebron, about 10 percent of the total area of the West Bank. Palestinians will have limited authority within a slightly larger area, with Israel retaining full control over the remaining 70 percent. A map of the new plan (see the December 1995 Washington Report, page 17) shows the West Bank Arab population fragmented into scattered islands, isolated by thruways that bypass Palestinian communities and connect Jewish settlements with Jerusalem. Because they will have no control over their land, their water resources, or their borders, Palestinians will be unable to develop their economy fully but will be forced to remain a source of cheap labor. (According to a New York Times report of Nov. 15, Israel already has plans to build two industrial parks in the West Bank, "where Israelis could use Palestinian labor without having the Palestinians enter Israel.")

Both optimists and pessimists found evidence to support their views in Rabin's speech to the Knesset on Oct. 6. Several of his phrases suggested that the prime minister sincerely wanted peace but because of fierce opposition from the right, first had to reassure Israelis that their security would not be endangered. He called on Israelis and Palestinians to "give peace a chance, to give the end of hostility a chance, to give another life a chance." He appealed to both sides to "preserve human dignity," something that Israeli authorities have deliberately denied Palestinians since the first day of the occupation. Rabin referred to the new Palestinian-controlled areas as "an entity...which will independently run the lives of Palestinians under its authority." Palestinians, he said, "will be responsible for managing their own lives."

"Less Than a State"

But he also told the Knesset that Palestinian self-rule would apply only to the population, not to territory. The new entity will be "less than a state," and Israel will continue to be responsible for security throughout most of the West Bank. The pre-1967 Green Line will be a thing of the past, Rabin assured the Knesset, since "the security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest sense of that term," and the huge new settlement blocs north and west of Jerusalem will become part of that city. With the inclusion of these settlements, Greater Jerusalem will encompass almost a third of the West Bank. On Oct. 19, two weeks after this speech, Rabin told a gathering from the Melmad religious movement that he wanted Israel to annex the Jordan Valley as well as the settlement blocs, a proposal that would keep a dozen West Bank Palestinian communities and 48,000 settlers under permanent Israeli sovereignty.

Although Rabin will be remembered as a martyr to peace, conscientious historians will have to record that before his death he had been anything but conciliatory to the Palestinians. Israelis are presumed to have carried out the murder in late October of Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki, an act that aroused resentment among a broad range of Palestinians. They were already bitter over Israel's violation of its agreement to release all Palestinian women prisoners. President Ezer Weizman and two army commanders refused to pardon at least four, and the government declined to overrule their decision. Despite the promises made in the Oslo II negotiations, only a thousand male prisoners have been released, with some 5,000 still in jail, including many who have been held for months without trial. Israel's double standard of justice was laid bare once again on Nov. 12 when the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in the case of a Jewish suspect awaiting trial that "Imprisonment without trial must take place only in exceptional and special cases...today it is man's fundamental right to liberty that is first and foremost in our eyes." But not, apparently, if the man is a Palestinian.

Instead of halting the expansion of West Bank settlements as a move toward peace, Rabin's government continued to confiscate more Palestinian land and to speed up the building of new roads, schools, clinics, sewer lines and utility systems for new settler housing constructed by private contractors. When Israeli generals announced on Oct. 7 that the redeployment of Israeli troops was unlikely to take place according to the agreed schedule because "the army was not ready," Palestinians bitterly assumed the government only wanted time to expand the settlements and with them the area under Israeli control.

Up until the week of Rabin's death Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza also continued to suffer under repeated border closings. They were sealed off from their jobs and schools between Sept. 17 and Oct. 24, and again on Oct. 29 after Shikaki was murdered. Following the usual custom, Israeli authorities sealed the borders again immediately after Rabin's assassination, even though his killer, Yigal Amir, was an Israeli and not a Palestinian. (It is worth noting that after Amir's arrest, his parents' home was not demolished, his neighbors were not put under curfew, Amir was not tied to a child's stool with a filthy hood over his head, and Shin Bet did not request permission to violently shake all Jewish suspects from now on.)

The frequent and extended border closings had seriously hampered preparations for the Palestinian elections scheduled for Jan. 20, according to Saeb Erekat of the Palestinian Authority. The closures had an even more damaging effect on the economy. Palestinian businessmen briefly threatened to boycott the Amman Economic Summit in late October to protest the fact that Arab countries were lifting their boycott against Israel while Palestinians still faced crippling restrictions on personal travel and the movement of goods.

Palestinians received another gratuitous blow only a few days before Rabin's death when Likud's chief allies in the U.S. Congress blocked an extension of the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act, thereby suspending U.S. aid to the Palestinians and forcing the PLO to close its Washington office.

By Nov. 4 the Rabin government appeared reluctant to implement even the minimal concessions called for in the Oslo agreements, and Congress seemed determined to scuttle the agreements entirely. Rabin's death on that day brought about a dramatic change of course—at least for the time being. One of the most shocking events in Israel's history—the killing of a Jewish leader by another Jew—had consequences almost directly contrary to what the right-wing assassin intended. A poll taken on Nov. 6 by the newspaper Yediot Ahronot found that 74 percent of Israelis now favored making peace with the Palestinians. On Sept. 28 they had been evenly split on the issue. Within the week, Congress voted to lift the suspension of U.S. aid to the Palestinians and to allow the PLO office to reopen. Hard-liners reversed themselves, one congressman said, in order to show support for "Rabin's legacy of peace."

But the development that offered Palestinians the most hope was the replacement of Yitzhak Rabin by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as prime minister. Unlike Rabin, Peres is not locked in the grip of old animosities and suspicions but has a vision of a prosperous Middle East that requires close cooperation between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. His protégé and closest associate, Yossi Beilin, was instrumental in originally bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in Oslo. When he formed his new cabinet in late November, Peres named the dovish Beilin to be minister in the prime minister's office, which suggested that he might be Peres' heir apparent and meanwhile will exert considerable influence on government policy. Another younger cabinet minister who is expected to be more forward-looking is Haim Ramon, who will be interior minister. Peres' most intriguing cabinet appointment was Rabbi Yehuda Amital, who will serve as liaison to settler and religious groups. Amital, the orthodox head of a religious school on the West Bank, reportedly favors territorial concessions to the Palestinians and opposes the injection of Jewish law into politics.

Peres's first major action was to lift the border closing imposed after Rabin's death. Two days after the assassination Peres announced that the withdrawal of Israeli troops from West Bank towns would proceed on schedule. Almost immediately they began leaving Jenin and are scheduled to be out of Bethlehem by Christmas. The fact that Peres named himself as defense minister indicates that he personally intends to oversee the further withdrawals called for by Oslo II, despite almost certain opposition within the powerful Israeli military.

Peres also lost no time in announcing that he would make it a top priority to revive the stalled peace negotiations with Syria. He specified that the talks could go beyond the issue of the Golan Heights and aim at a comprehensive Middle East peace. When Syria responded favorably, U.S. Middle East mediator Dennis Ross made plans for a new round of shuttles between Jerusalem and Damascus, probably beginning in January.

Hope that Peres will make more intense efforts than Rabin to achieve a just peace was reinforced by Akiva Eldar, Washington bureau chief for Ha'aretz, in a Nov. 8 op-ed piece in the New York Times. Eldar pointed out that Rabin had been "almost obsessed" with accommodating right-wing settlers and politicians. Peres, on the other hand, "supports Palestinian self-determination, and dreams of a...confederation among Palestinians, Jordan and Israel with lowered trade barriers and cooperation. This was something Rabin never wanted to discuss."

A Required Attribute

Although Yitzhak Rabin took the first step toward peace in agreeing to negotiate with the PLO, his career as fighter for Israeli statehood and later as enforcer of the occupation was marked by the ruthlessness that characterized Israel's birth and became almost a required attribute in its leaders. The shock of his assassination revealed that a substantial number of Israelis supported a peace based on accommodation with the Palestinians but their voices had not been heard amid the clamor of religious and political hard-liners. Peres will be able to keep moving in the right direction only if supporters of peace in Israel and the U.S. apply constant pressure, or, as David Newman of Ben-Gurion University urged in the Nov.-Dec. issue of Tikkun, "fight as fiercely as we do in war." Newman urged activists to "push and cajole the government to move forward toward a solution in which neither side to the conflict feels inferior or subordinate to the other."

Optimists counter critics of the Oslo agreements by insisting that a psychological breakthrough has been achieved and despite its shortcomings the present arrangement is a first step toward full Palestinian independence. Even some Palestinians agree there can be no going back once the process of self-government has begun. But the coming months will be crucial, since the Peres government and the PLO will have to confront three key issues that must be settled within a year: the status of Jerusalem, the future of Jewish settlements, and the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlements from the city of Hebron. All the evidence indicates that Peres will be more open to compromise on these issues than Rabin would have been, but his time is limited, since the November 1996 elections could bring the Likud party back to power and put an end to hopes of a mutually acceptable settlement. In the absence of such a settlement, Israelis and Palestinians could find themselves once again trapped in a cycle of terrorism and repressive state violence, fueled by Israeli extremists on the right. Meanwhile, for the brief period that remains, Prime Minister Rabin's death at the hands of an unrepentant zealot has, paradoxically, provided Israelis and Palestinians with a new opportunity to achieve peace, this time a real one, based on the return of territory and the coexistence of both peoples as equals.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance writer living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.