Israel Matzav

Rabin on Jerusalem

Since it's just a week past the date of Yitzchak Rabin's death on the Gregorian calendar, and since Jerusalem is once again in the news, perhaps it's worth looking again at how the prime mover of Oslo thought Jerusalem would end up. This is from Yaacov Lozowick.

There are parts of the so-called peace-camp left who are so determined to force their agenda on Israel that in recent years they're moving ever closer to an overall denying of Jewish history. This is a subject I've alluded to occasionally, and probably ought to write about systematically someday. Today I won't go back centuries or millenia;15 years will suffice. A few months before his assassination, Yitzchak Rabin had a meeting with Dr. Israel Kimche, a scholar who knows Jerusalem and its issues as well as anyone alive; Kimche had managed to finagle a meeting with the prime minister because as he saw it, the peace process was heading towards a discussion of the division of Jerusalem, and he wanted Rabin to start thinking about it. Rabin's public position was that peace process or not, Jerusalem would not be divided and would remain under Israeli sovereignty; during the meeting he was extremely nervous and anxious to get it over with, fearing that even the appearance of listening to a scholarly presentation about division would be politically ruinous.

So far as anyone can know, he died convinced that peace could be reached without dividing the city.

In fact, the Left has invented a Rabin legacy that has no connection whatsoever with what Rabin said in his lifetime. This is from Rabin's last Knesset speech before his death. The speech was given on October 5, 1995.

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma'ale Adumim and Givat Ze'ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the "Green Line," prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

Read the whole thing. Rabin wouldn't recognize the legacy that the Left has invented for him. And if he didn't already realize it before his death, I believe that he would realize today that he's been had.

Labels: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Oslo accords, Yitzchak Rabin

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:15 PM