In the late evening of Nov. 4, 1995, Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down in Tel Aviv. He was shot and killed by Yigal Amir, a young Israeli who had substituted violence for faith and rage for reason. Amir abused the name of God when he invoked it to murder another human being.
Twenty years have passed since that shocking, melancholy, distressing night. The 20th yahrzeit of that ghastly act was commemorated last week on the 12th day of Cheshvan.
Rabin was assassinated because his murderer objected to the prime minister’s commitment to cede land to the Palestinians as enshrined in the Declarations of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (also known as the Oslo accords), signed on the White House lawn on Sept. 13, 1993.
Indeed, there were many others – in Israel and elsewhere – who, for varied reasons, warned against and objected to the signing of the Oslo accords. Rabin acknowledged the significant risks, but decided to seize what he believed was a truly historic opportunity.
Unfortunately, subsequent years have proven the failure of the accords. Rather than partners for peace, Palestinian leaders turned out to be prevaricators. The promises they made were false. The legal commitments they signed were ignored. The solemn utterances to audiences in Washington or Oslo about their embrace of non-violence were untrue.
When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat walked away from negotiations with Israel at Camp David, some seven years after that hopeful handshake on the White House lawn, he knew that then-U.S. president Bill Clinton was alert to the Palestinian leader’s duplicity. To provide a pretext for abjuring the resumption of talks with Israel, Arafat launched the suicide bombing intifadah in September 2000 in which so many men, women and children died violently.
Despite the ultimate failure of the Oslo accords, Rabin was correct to attempt to find a breakthrough with the Palestinian leaders. Not to have done so, he believed, would have betrayed the sanctity of the numerous prayers for peace that inspire the collective yearning of the Jewish People.
On Oct. 5, 1995, merely one month before he was killed, Rabin’s final words to the Knesset on the ratification of the Oslo peace accords demonstrated that his vision of coexistence with the Palestinians was neither naïve nor delusional. While hopeful of securing a final agreement, he was clearly aware of possible pitfalls along the way.
“We view the permanent solution in the framework of the 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 June 4, 1967 lines.
“Today we may be opening a new stage in the annals of the Jewish People and the State of Israel. We know the chances. We know the risks. We will do our best to expand the chances and reduce the risks.
“We appeal to Jews and Palestinians alike to act with restraint, to preserve human dignity, to behave in a fitting manner – and to live in peace and security. We are embarking upon a new path which could lead us to an era of peace, to the end of wars.
“That is our prayer. That is our hope.”
That Rabin’s hope was not realized resounds to the everlasting shame and disgrace of the Palestinian leaders. To this day, they extol victimhood, preach hatred and counsel the destruction of the Jewish state rather than the building of their own Palestinian state. And so, they continue to betray their own people and condemn them to statelessness.
What a tragedy.
