The fictitious legacy of Yitzhak Rabin

Tomorrow we’ll mark the seventh anniversary (on the Western calendar) of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. And we’ll be subjected to all sorts of nostalgic postulations about the peace that would envelop the Middle East today had he survived. I blog not to praise Rabin, nor to criticize him, but to try to dispense with some of this sentimental propagandistic bullshit.

At last night’s lackluster memorial ceremonies in Tel Aviv, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan all made videotaped addresses to the crowd.

Clinton:

It is almost overwhelmingly sad to think what state the world would be in if he was still with us.

Mubarak:

He was a brave fighter for peace. Peace would have become a reality if not for that traitorous hand.

Reality check (from the June, 1995 Middle East Quarterly):

In contrast, the DoP [Declaration of Principles] has failed dismally in its Palestinian dimension. The "liberation" of Gaza and Jericho produced no relaxation of Middle East violence. Quite the contrary, for most of its duration it has produced escalating terrorism. From the Rabin-Arafat handshake until March 13, 1995, 123 Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists, compared to 67 for the same period before the handshake. [fn] This increase consisted almost entirely of murders within Israel, for the numbers within the occupied territories were nearly the same in each period. The streets of Gaza have exploded into a crescendo of hatred toward Jews, with a level of savagery unseen since the end of the Second World War. Things are so bad that press reports indicate the Israeli military has been drawing up contingency plans should Katyusha rockets be fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip. [fn]

A recent lull in terror attacks suggests to some Israeli officials that the PLO is at last cracking down on Islamic militants. [fn] But it is a mistake for wishful-thinking Israelis to read too much into this respite, for it likely results more from the Israeli policy of "separation" and restriction of access for Palestinians than any real move by the PLO to suppress terrorists. To the limited extent that the decrease in attacks may been related to PLO policy, there is reason to wonder whether such good behavior will end once Palestinians gain control over the entire West Bank, that is, once they no longer have reason to tamp down anti-Israel violence.

So the "peace process" was already foundering badly while Rabin was alive and well, and although the rhetoric of "closures" and "checkpoints" hadn't yet found its way into the daily lexicon, those "policies" were already necessitated by terrorist activities. And then there's this from a March, 1995, article entitled “As Peace Process Dies, The Blame Game Begins,” in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a staunchly pro-Arab publication with strong links to the U.S. State Department.

From the beginning, Arafat's Palestinian opponents believed Rabin had no intention of carrying out Israel's obligations under the DOP. Instead, Palestinian skeptics believed, Rabin counted on Arafat and his opponents to comport themselves so badly that the Palestinians could be blamed for the failure of the peace process. Whether or not that was Rabin's original intention, it clearly is now.

In the absence of pressure from the United States, he has made it clear to the Palestinians that so long as the "terror" persists, there will be no withdrawal and no elections. By his actions he also has made it clear to Israeli voters that so long as he is prime minister of Israel there will be no sharing of Jerusalem, no Palestinian sovereignty, and that he will leave the settlers alone. Although his public approval has dipped well below that of Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu, Rabin hopes it will rebound when voters decide that he has cleverly tricked the Palestinians—and the Americans.

* * *

Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's fox, has taken advantage of a disorganized and inexperienced American president who obviously is susceptible to media and perhaps even cruder blackmail. By doing so, Rabin believes he also has tricked the Palestinians into giving his government enough time to consolidate the complete takeover of their land. What he is overlooking, however, is that in the interest of his own re-election he also has tricked his fellow Israelis into giving up their last chance, almost certainly forever, to live in peace—and survive—in an increasingly well-armed, hostile and outraged Middle East.

That’s right. Several months before Rabin’s assassination, Arab apologists had already declared the so-called peace process “dead,” and laid the blame squarely at the feet of the Israeli Prime Minister.

It's way past time we ended this ridiculous charade and started concentrating on reality? Rabin’s assassination was an outrage, an abomination and a tragedy. But it wasn’t the beginning of the end of the golden road to peace. That road never led anywhere other than exactly where we find ourselves today.