BICOM

Key Points

• The legacy of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated fourteen years ago this week, was in helping to shape mainstream Israeli support for a peace process with the Palestinians that would put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• The idea of a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank is today accepted in principle by a clear majority of Israelis.
• This has enabled current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak of ‘a wide national consensus on the idea of two states for two peoples’ and to agree to begin negotiations on this basis.
• However, there is great scepticism among both Israelis and Palestinians about the possibility of reaching a peace agreement in the current political climate. The possibility of Palestinian national elections early next year is making US efforts to revive bilateral talks even more difficult.

Introduction

Israel last week marked the fourteenth anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with memorial services held throughout the country. An annual peace rally at the square in Tel Aviv renamed in his honour is scheduled for next weekend. It is due to include a video message from US President Barack Obama and addresses by senior politicians from across mainstream Israeli politics, not just Rabin’s Labour Party.  Labour has declined significantly in recent years, as the quest for peace which Rabin symbolised has proved elusive, but Rabin himself made a lasting imprint on Israel’s politics and society. This analysis explores the significance of Rabin’s legacy in the context of ongoing US diplomatic efforts to renew the peace process, and related internal dynamics in Israel and the Palestinian political arena.

Forging a vision of peace

Yitzhak Rabin twice served as Israeli prime minister (1974-1977 and 1992-1995), and before that as military chief of staff during the June 1967 Six-Day War. It was during his second term as prime minister that he carved out his place in Middle East history, signing a peace treaty with Jordan, opening dialogue with North African and Persian Gulf states and, most famously, signing the Oslo peace accords with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. His assassination in November 1995, by a right-wing extremist, shocked the world. The presence at his funeral of world statesmen, including Arab leaders, was testament to the international respect he earned for his role as a peace maker.

A great deal has been written and debated about Rabin’s legacy over the last decade and a half.  When considering Rabin’s impact on Israel today, we might begin with the present.  The ideas of Palestinian statehood and ceding most of the territories taken by Israel in 1967 are today accepted in principle by a clear majority of Israelis. In his most important policy speech since coming to office, at Bar Ilan University in June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict publicly for the first time. This marked a major shift in his stance. It is the broad base of Israeli public support for the idea of a Palestinian state which has enabled Netanyahu to speak of ‘a wide national consensus on the idea of two states for two peoples.’[i]  Such statements from Netanyahu about the rights of the Palestinians to a state were unimaginable at the time of Rabin’s death.

Latest polling by the Tami Steinmetz Center at Tel Aviv University shows that 67% of the Jewish population in Israel believe the two-state solution is the only path to peace. Another poll by the Institute for National Security Studies echoes this finding and shows consistent support over the last few years.[ii] There is fierce opposition of course. There are those within the settler movement who are unwilling to compromise the historic ‘land of Israel’ out of religious conviction. There are also those on the hard right who have never perceived the Palestinians to be a credible partner for peace. However these implacable opponents to a Palestinian state, though determined, are in the minority.

It was the vision of peace shared by Rabin and Shimon Peres which has helped create this domestic political reality in Israel today. Rabin long recognised both the strategic importance and real-world limitations of military power, and the ultimate need for a political-diplomatic path, however difficult to follow. When Peres, as foreign minister in the early 1990s, presented him with Oslo track, Rabin made the tough decision to pursue it, despite being deeply conscious of the difficulties, and not always at ease with them. Rabin saw the future of Israelis and Palestinians was intertwined and believed in Israel’s responsibility to preserve its Jewish and democratic character.[iii]  This key aspect of his legacy he bequeathed to subsequent Israeli leaders who had opposed him when he was alive.

Reservations in practice

Though the path that Rabin initiated continues to shape most Israelis’ conceptions of peace, the collapse of the Oslo process left many questioning the practicality of achieving an agreement that could end the conflict. Again, Rabin himself had been acutely aware what was at stake in the process and the risks involved. The architects of Oslo also saw merit in progressing through a series of interim agreements in order to build trust, rather than attempting to tackle at the outset the most difficult issues such as Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. However the process proved trying and painful as Palestinian suicide bombers sought to derail it from the outset. As Israeli settlement-building continued, many ordinary Palestinians became cynical.

After becoming prime minister in 1999, Ehud Barak concluded from failed final-status talks on these issues in 2000 that there was ‘no Palestinian partner’. Disillusionment grew in Israel with the violent onslaught of the Second Intifada and has resonated with many Israelis ever since.

One of the consequences of this development has been to contribute to the decline of the organised political left. When Rabin led the Labour Party to electoral victory in 1992, it held 44 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Its loss of support over the course of five subsequent sets of elections has left it as the fourth largest party, with 13 seats.  Similarly, the smaller left-wing party, Meretz, had 12 seats in 1992.  Today, it has just three.

In other words, today’s Israeli Labour Party bears no resemblance to that of which Rabin was a part throughout his political career. The reasons for its demise are complex and multifaceted, but its decline does not mean Israelis do not want peace. As Labour MK Daniel Ben-Simon reflected last week after quitting his role as party whip, ‘Many Israelis who want peace don’t want the left to negotiate it.’[iv]

Competing Palestinian interests

Internal Palestinian political developments have played their part in fuelling scepticism about what can currently be achieved, both among Israelis and Palestinians themselves. Despite numerous rounds of Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks over the last year, the bitter split between the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, led by Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip continues.

Earlier this month, Abbas issued a presidential decree calling for parliamentary and presidential elections for 24 January, which Hamas quickly rejected. If Abbas remains in office without being re-elected his legitimacy will be damaged in the eyes of the Palestinian public. Hamas refuses to accept his extended term even now. If Fatah and Hamas do make some form of agreement, elections could be pushed back until June. An election which does not include Gaza would further entrench Palestinian division.

Amid this uncertainty, the US has a strategic interest to bolster Abbas and his moderate secular faction ahead of elections, whenever they are held. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was recently in Washington, reportedly to press home the precariousness of Abbas’s domestic standing at present.[v]  At the same time, the US is attempting to persuade the Palestinian leader to reopen stalled peace negotiations with Israel. However, Abbas’s wariness of Netanyahu and fears that Hamas would exploit his negotiations with Israel, raise doubts as to whether Abbas has a genuine interest in talks at this time. In a press conference with Netanyahu on Saturday evening following a meeting in Abu Dhabi with Abbas, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted that Israel was making ‘unprecedented’ strides in terms of restraining West Bank settlement construction.[vi] The PA has since issued statements rejecting a return to the negotiating table and continuing to demand a full settlement freeze, even though such pre-conditions were not insisted on in the past. US special envoy for the Middle East, George Mitchell, has stayed in the region to persevere with efforts to renew peace talks.

Conclusion

In the context of recent memorials for the late Yitzhak Rabin, some Israeli commentators have asked rhetorically whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will take bold steps for peace in the way Rabin did in the Oslo process. Under considerable pressure from the US when he took office seven months ago, Netanyahu has declared support for the two-state solution and is willing to enter into negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.  However, restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is proving more challenging for the US than it hoped. The Palestinian political divide is an increasingly difficult backdrop against which to reopen talks. The run up to possible Palestinian elections will not make it easier. Whether Netanyahu and Abbas together can live up to the legacy for peace left by Rabin can only begin to be tested once peace talks resume.

Further Reading

BICOM Briefing: Fifteen years after peace with Jordan, Israelis support Palestinian state – 23/10/2009

 

 

 

 

 

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[i] Barak Ravid, ‘Netanyahu: We have consensus on two-state solution’, Haaretz, 5 July 2009

[ii] For further details, see Israeli Public Opinion, The Institute for National Security Studies; The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research; and BICOM Briefing: Fifteen years after peace with Jordan, Israelis support Palestinian state

[iii] See Dennis Ross, ‘Preserving democracy in the Jewish state: Rabin’s driving imperatives’, Striving for Peace: The Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin (London: Labour Friends of Israel).

[iv] Gershom Gorenberg, ‘The Israeli Left Implodes’, The American Prospect, 22 October 2009.

[v] Barak Ravid, ‘PA negotiator: Israel painting us as ‘untrustworthy bastards”, Haaretz, 27 October 2009.

[vi] ‘Press Conference with PM Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’, Prime Minister’s Office, Israel, 31 October 2009.