Israel mulls Rabin's legacy as peace prospects blur

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Israel mulls Rabin's legacy as peace prospects blur

10:55, October 31, 2010      

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Eitan Haber, a veteran colleague and confidant of late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said he has a wish he'd like to fulfill: to visit Jerusalem's Mount Herzl military cemetery and gently knock on Rabin's marble gravestone, and then to talk.

Israelis attend a rally for a memorial service marking the 15th anniversary of the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at the square where he was assassinated in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct.30, 2010. (Xinhua/Yin Dongxun)

Just to quietly chat, as two old buddies who've seen much in their time, of the path Israel has taken in the decade and a half since that November night, when an assassin's hollow-point rounds pierced Rabin's back.

"Hey, you won't believe this," he imagined himself saying, "but Benjamin Netanyahu was here last week and said that he's committed to your peace legacy."

"A thunderous, rolling laugh" would burst from the great beyond, Haber said, who served as Rabin's bureau chief. He's sure of it. It is, he said, the painful irony of fate.

"Fifteen years before (Netanyahu), Rabin had already seen Israel's needs and its future. He dreamt of peace and fought for it. And there were those who fought him, among them the current prime minister," Haber said.

FROM A BREAKTHROUGH

An optimistic excitement swept Israel when Rabin first introduced the Oslo Accords in 1993. Netanyahu, then leader of the Likud Party opposition, was much less enthused, along with many on the right.

As time wore on, demonstrations and protests against the accords grew louder and more violent. At one major rally at Zion Square in downtown Jerusalem, Netanyahu, standing on a balcony overlooking the crowds, delivered a stinging denunciation of Rabin and the agreement with the Palestinians, with some protesters below chanting "Death to Rabin!"

The Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn in September 1993, were not what Rabin had in mind when he entered his second term as prime minister.

They brought then Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat back to the West Bank and Gaza after a decade-long exile in Tunisia, and created the Palestinian National Authority.

The agreement was also the first attempt at a public Palestinian-Israeli dialogue, and hoped-for mutual recognition and a renunciation of violence.

Twenty-six months later, striding towards his limousine at the end of a mass peace rally in Tel Aviv, Rabin was shot dead by a right-wing Israeli law student, Yigal Amir.

Now there are new peace talks. Launched in early September, the U.S.-mediated direct negotiations between current Israeli premier Netanyahu and PNA President Mahmoud Abbas have reached an impasse: over the disputes on Israel's construction in West Bank settlements. Is Rabin still relevant to their future, whatever that may be?

Netanyahu said he is.

"I am a partner to your vision of peace," he declared beside Rabin's grave at the official state ceremony on Oct. 15.

But "only time will tell if Netanyahu is planning a move or playing for time," said Amotz Asa-El, former executive editor of The Jerusalem Post and a commentator for The Wall Street Journal.

Haber believed "Rabin's endeavor is relevant because it is the only possible way."

"Oslo achieved the breakthrough of talks with the Palestinians. Nothing today is similar to the beginning of Oslo. All the prime ministers after Rabin -- Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu -- have gone far beyond Oslo (in the concessions they were prepared to make for peace)," Haber told Xinhua.


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