With three bullets, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli Jew has forced Israelis and the international Jewish community to confront the deep division over the question of the occupied territories and has further dimmed the prospect of peace in the Middle East.
"We never thought it would happen in Israel. We were all so proud of our democracy," said a shocked Deputy Consul General Eitan Surkis-Almog in an interview Saturday night from the Israeli consulate in Atlanta.
The 73-year-old Rabin, adored by his countrymen for leading them through wars and hostage crises, was gunned down by a lone assassin Saturday night as he was leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv. The alleged gunman, Jewish law student Yigal Amir, 25, confessed to the killing, saying he acted on God's orders and did not regret killing Rabin. Right-wing Jewish extremist groups have claimed responsibility, although it is not yet clear if Amir coordinated his actions with anyone. Rabin is the first Israeli leader to die at the hands of an assassin since the state's founding in 1948.
The assassination comes at a pivotal juncture in the politics of the Middle East. During the last two years, Arab and Israeli leaders have met face-to-face and discussed the prospect of peace, considered by analysts of the region to be a major change in policy. Prior to the historic handshake between Israel's Rabin and the Palestine Liberation Organization's Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn in September 1993, Palestinian leaders were unwilling to accept the existence of a Zionist state on their lands. Palestine lost these lands in the 1948 War for Independence and the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israeli armies captured the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West Bank.
"Ever since 1967, Israel has been divided on the territories conquered in the war," said Ezra Mendelsohn, a visiting professor of history from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Israel always had the option of annexing the territories, but the 1967 United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 called for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in return for Arab de facto recognition of Israel. "[The occupied territories] has been the great issue in Israeli politics, more important than any other issue," Mendelsohn said.
In the pursuit of peace, Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of mutual recognition in September 1993. That same month, Rabin and Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles, which is a two-phased approach to dealing with the West Bank and Gaza.
The first phase, widely called "Gaza-Jericho first," calls for Arab interim autonomy within the occupied territories of Gaza and Jericho, located in the West Bank. This is a five-year transitional arrangement, involving the complete withdrawal of Israeli military from these regions, and is seen as a testing ground for a larger peace settlement with the PLO and the Arab world. The second phase of the peace agreement calls for a final status agreement to be reached.
In September, Israel's 120-member parliament, the Knesset, passed--in a razor-thin 61-59 vote--a resolution to extend Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank beyond Gaza and Jericho. But while many Israelis see the concessions as part of a monumental experiment, many Arabs see self-rule as the first step toward a future Palestinian state, which worries many Israelis. A bloody history of mistrust and increased terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens in recent months has swung public support increasingly in favor of the opposing, right-of-center Likud Party.
"We must literally stick to our guns," said Likud party member and Knesset Defense Committee member Benny Begin--son of Menachem Begin, former Prime Minister of Israel and leader of the Likud party--in an interview this summer in Jerusalem. "Why should we be actively pursuing peace given the past failed experiments?" he said, citing the Palestinian Police's inability to crack down on Islamic terrorist groups in Gaza and Jericho.
Begin added that many Israelis have the legitimate fear that Arab extremist groups, having acquired the West Bank, will use it as a base from which to launch additional, more lethal attacks on Jewish settlements in the territories and on Israeli citizens living in the coastal valley below.
It is this fear of exchanging "territory for terror" that some say led to the murder of Rabin. "This man who killed Rabin is not a lunatic. Many people in the country regard [Rabin] as a traitor," Mendelsohn said.
Polls have shown a great reluctance among the Israeli public to relinquish the territories, and Rabin's party has lost some support. Before the Knesset extended Palestinian self-rule in September, 15 hours of stormy debate ensued, while outside the building, 20,000 protesters threw torches at the police and stoned the car of at least one cabinet minister making his way inside. One protester even said that Rabin would be killed if he emerged from the building.
Such public displays against Rabin's peace strategy may have fostered an atmosphere ripe for assassination. "We were always concerned that some of the language and some of the tone [of the public rhetoric] would legitimize violence in the mind of an individual on the margin of society," said Kenny Jacobson, director of international affairs and assistant national director for the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that fights anti-Semitism.
The ADL warned the Israeli government this summer that such rhetoric was creating an environment where "words could kill," he added. Only a week before the assassination, Likud Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu addressed opponents of the peace accords, some of whom carried a likeness of Rabin dressed in the uniform of an SS commander of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
The connection to Hitler may seem extreme, history professor Mendelsohn said, but many people believe that Rabin's strategy could lead to the destruction of Jews and the Zionist claim to the land. "This is not like politics in the West," he said. "Given the recent history of Jews, it's not surprising."
Moreover, Mendelsohn said that such extreme statements reflect deeply entrenched political or religious beliefs. "This is not rhetoric. This is what people believe," he said.
If that is the case, Rabin's absence makes Israel's prospects for peace with its Arab neighbors even dimmer.
Rabin's successor, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, has some big shoes to fill. Though once Rabin's political arch-rival within the Labor Party, Rabin and Peres "turned out to be a fantastic team, Peres the visionary, Rabin the pragmatic one," said Jacobson of the ADL. In 1994, Rabin, Peres and Arafat shared the Nobel Peace Prize. With Rabin gone, many scholars of Arab-Israeli political affairs say that the success of the peace process will hinge on whether Peres can restrain his visionary optimism and convince the Israeli public that he can and will protect Israel's security interests.
"Rabin had the military [record] and did a number of things to protect security interests when he took office," Jacobson added. In the months after his election in 1992, Rabin expelled from Israel 415 Islamic extremists and later, after several knifings of Israelis, closed the borders to Palestinians in the occupied territories. In both cases, Rabin went much further than the Likud party ever had, Jacobson said.
Peter Timko, a researcher at the Arab-American Institute, a political empowerment organization based in Washington, D.C., added that Peres, lacking a military perspective, cannot see the same sorts of risks that Rabin saw in pursuing peace.
Given his outstanding military record and acts of massive retaliation against Arab forces, Rabin assured the public he was a soldier who would not betray Israel's security interests as he pursued peace. "He created an environment where he could make political concessions because the public had faith he would protect their security," Jacobson said.
Peres will succeed if he cultivates such public support, Jacobson said. Timko added that Peres, considered to be even more amenable to peace efforts than Rabin, will have to act more harshly than Rabin against terrorists to prove that territorial exchange does not mean terror.
But public reluctance about territorial transfer also will be difficult to change because of the long history of suspicion between Jews and Arabs. "Many people hated Rabin, and [those who did] hate Peres even more because of the perception that Peres [initiated and led] the peace accords," Mendelsohn said.
"This assassination is not going to change many people's minds about what the government should do," Mendelsohn said. "[This is] something Americans can't understand... this goes much deeper. It has to do with religious beliefs. [Rabin's orthodox opponents] don't support him because he's doing something which God doesn't want them to do."
According to Jewish scripture, the entire land of Israel was given to the Jewish people. But in Islamic tradition, lands once occupied by Muslims can never be converted to a non-Muslim faith, said Rabbi David Rosen, director of Interfaith Relations for the ADL and an adviser to the Israeli foreign ministry on the interfaith implications of the peace process, in an interview this summer in Jerusalem.
Despite public doubt in Peres' ability and in Arab promises of peace, some scholars believe that the assassination will actually benefit the peace process. Jacobson and Judaic studies professor Eric Meyers said that they believe that Peres can use the emotional momentum of Rabin's death to push forward with the peace process before the national elections, which are scheduled to take place next November but may now occur earlier. "The close-knit nature of Israeli society is such that the death of anybody exacts a huge toll. For it to be someone of Rabin's stature is horrific," Timko of the Arab-American Institute added.
Mendelsohn, however, disagreed. "In the long run, [Rabin's death] will not create dialogue and understanding because the fault lines are too deep and there are too many unknowns," he said. "The assassination is not going to heal the divisiveness of the society because the issue is not going to go away."
The momentum of the peace process will depend, as it always has, on convincing the political center that security can be guaranteed. This takes on greater urgency with the upcoming Israeli national elections next November, in which the Likud Party is expected to take over. In addition, Timko said, given that elections might be held sooner, it is possible that Peres will push even harder than Rabin did to carry the country to the point that the peace process cannot be reversed, even if the Likud party wins the next election.
Events already set in motion may prove to be enough. The September accord withdraws Israeli troops from the region. "Once the soldiers withdraw, it will be very difficult to reintroduce them," Timko said.
Jewish settlers in the West Bank have voiced strong opposition to Rabin's attempts because they could endanger not only their settlements but the welfare of Israel proper as well. Western Samaria, comprising mainly the West Bank, provides about 50 percent of Israel's water supply. The Samarian mountains overlook Tel Aviv, which houses 40 percent of the Israeli population and about 80 percent of Israeli industry.
But no matter who emerges as victor in the Israeli national election, one fact is certain. "Israeli leaders would be afraid of embarking on a policy without American support," Mendelsohn said. President Bill Clinton, in a press conference Saturday night, said, "Peace must be, and peace will be, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's lasting legacy."
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