Israel Matzav

Rabin: 'Peace with 'Palestinians' a long shot'

A new book to be published later this year by Yitzchak Rabin's English-language speech writer and close friend Yehuda Avner claims that Rabin believed that peace with the 'Palestinians' was a 'long-shot,' but that he reluctantly tried it because he feared that fundamentalist Islam was taking over the 'Palestinian' population. The claim is based on an interview with Rabin just three days before his death (Hat Tip: Eliyahu P).

As the veteran diplomat, today 81, explains in a new book, he had just completed an ambassadorship to Australia in late 1995 and had been invited by Rabin to rejoin his team.

“I met him at his Jerusalem office on Wednesday, 1 November,” Avner writes in The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, which is being published this month by Toby Press. “My first question was, ‘Why did you shake Yasser Arafat’s hand?’”

...

“Number one,” he recounts Rabin as saying, “Israel is surrounded by two concentric circles. The inner circle is comprised of our immediate neighbors – Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon and, by extension, Saudi Arabia. The outer circle comprises their neighbors – Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. Virtually all of them are rogue states, and some are going nuclear.

“Number two,” the prime minister went on, “Iranian-inspired Islamic fundamentalism constitutes a threat to the inner circle no less than it does to Israel. Islamic fundamentalism is striving to destabilize the Gulf Emirates, has already created havoc in Syria, leaving twenty thousand dead, in Algeria, leaving one hundred thousand dead, in Egypt, leaving twenty-two thousand dead, in Jordan, leaving eight thousand dead, in the Horn of Africa – the Sudan and Somalia – leaving fourteen thousand dead, and in Yemen, leaving twelve thousand dead. And now it is gaining influence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“Iran is the banker,” Rabin pointed out, “pouring millions into the West Bank and Gaza in the form of social welfare and health and education programs, so that it can win the hearts of the population and feed religious fanaticism.

“Thus,” he continued to Avner, “a confluence of interest has arisen between Israel and the inner circle, whose long-term strategic interest is the same as ours: to lessen the destabilizing consequences from the outer circle. At the end of the day, the inner circle recognizes they have less to fear from Israel than from their Muslim neighbors, not least from radicalized Islamic powers going nuclear.”

Next, Rabin came to the thinking at the heart of his decision to pursue the Oslo process: The Israel-Arab conflict, he said, “was always considered to be a political one: a conflict between Arabs and Israelis. The fundamentalists are doing their level best to turn it into a religious conflict – Muslim against Jew, Islam against Judaism. And while a political conflict is possible to solve through negotiation and compromise, there are no solutions to a theological conflict. Then it is jihad – religious war: their God against our God. Were they to win, our conflict would go from war to war, and from stalemate to stalemate.

“And that, essentially,” the prime minister summed up to his longtime adviser, “is why I agreed to Oslo and shook hands, albeit reluctantly, with Yasser Arafat. He and his PLO represent the last vestige of secular Palestinian nationalism. We have nobody else to deal with. It is either the PLO or nothing. It is a long shot for a possible settlement, or the certainty of no settlement at all at a time when the radicals are going nuclear.”

Hmmm.

It's certainly no great secret here that Rabin despised and distrusted Arafat and was dragged kicking and screaming into the 'peace process.' In fact, rumor has it that at the time of Rabin's death, he was considering suspending the 'Oslo process' altogether, because he believed that the 'Palestinians' were engaging in terrorism. The article notes that Avner was supposed to have a second interview with Rabin four days later, on Sunday, November 5, 1995, but that interview never took place because Rabin was assassinated on Saturday night November 4. It would have been fascinating to hear what Rabin would have had to add to his remarks.

According to Amazon, the book isn't going to be available until September 1, but if someone wants to arrange a review copy for me, I'd be happy to accept it.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:18 AM