Her dark eyes focused intently, her voice somber yet unwavering, Lea Rabin recounted before a packed Page Auditorium audience last night how her husband's quest for peace in the Middle East met with such a violent end at a Tel Aviv peace rally in November 1995, and how much the peace process has suffered because of it. But, she avowed with similar conviction, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's legacy will help sustain the peace process currently derailed by animosity and mistrust on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
"I'm here to speak in the name of my slain husband since he cannot speak anymore," Lea Rabin announced. "Yitzhak knew this train of peace would be met with obstacles and land mines, but he said, 'I'd rather take risks for peace than risks for war because war is 100 times more dangerous.' Yitzhak did not think he would not see the light, but on November 5, he did not see the light-and he will not see it again.... They shot him dead because he wanted the sun to rise."
In a speech laced with metaphors about the prospects for Middle East peace, Lea Rabin emphasized three crucial elements to laying a solid foundation for peace: trust, respect and hope. This philosophy, she explained, compelled her late husband to stem the tide of historical acrimony between Israel and its neighbors and drove him to broker monumental peace accords with PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat in 1993 and King Hussein of Jordan in 1994. The following year in Washington, D.C., Rabin signed the Oslo II agreement-which extended Palestinian autonomy to much of the Arab population on the West Bank-along with Arafat, Hussein and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
But for all of those in the region who supported Rabin's agenda-"one principle: land for peace," Lea Rabin called it-there also stood a loud faction of Israelis, vehemently opposed to Rabin and convinced he was betraying them by ceding holy portions of Jewish land to the enemy. They branded him a traitor of the worst sort, shouting threats and burning posters of him in an SS uniform or in a kaffiyeh-the Arab headdress worn by Arafat.
Lea Rabin maintained that such activities fostered an eruptive climate in Israel in 1995-a climate she believes was sanctioned by current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others from his Likud Party-and are as responsible for her husband's murder as the right-wing Zionist assassin who pumped the bullets into him.
"The day Oslo II was signed in Washington with the Palestinians was festive, a wonderful moment of achievement," Lea Rabin recalled. "But then our skies became darkened by hostile acts, by those who sabotage peace. Yitzhak did not think a Jew could kill him.... Mr. Netanyahu himself participated in rallies, a sickeningly cruel metaphor.... The skies in the Middle East are now overcast, the winds of war blowing around. Gone is hope, gone is the sense of partnership."
That Lea Rabin welcomed Arafat at the shiva house for her husband following his assassination, but refused Netanyahu, underscored her adamant opposition to those who she believes undermine the peace process for which Yitzhak Rabin gave his life. Indeed, last night she offered pointed words for the Netanyahu government regarding its lack of direction toward achieving peace.
"There are very few feelings I have because there are very few steps," she responded to an audience member's question. "We need a lot of patience right now because the wagon of peace is stuck.... Peace has enemies, unfortunately, and they killed Yitzhak Rabin, who had the wagon of peace on his shoulders."
Lea Rabin had rode unflaggingly by her husband's side since they met a half-century ago as members of the Palmach, an underground force fighting for an independent Jewish state; in 1948, they married during a cease-fire in the war for Israeli independence. Together, they had two children and six grandchildren.
She accompanied Yitzhak Rabin every step of his storied public service career, as she chronicled in her recently published memoir, "Rabin: Our Life, His Legacy"-from his commanding of the Israeli forces to victory in the Six-Day War (1967), to his ambassadorship to the United States (1973), to becoming Israel's youngest prime minister (1974) to leading the successful raid on Entebbe, Uganda, to rescue passengers taken hostage on an Israeli airline (1976).
After becoming minister of defense in 1984, Rabin began to realize the need for cooperation and compromise, as opposed to perpetual conflict, in order to forge a lasting peace among Israel and its Middle East counterparts. It was a sentiment cemented by the time he became Prime Minister again in 1992 after winning the general election-and a sentiment echoed by his widow at Monday evening's speech sponsored by the Rudnick Lectureship Fund.
"Any terror can be solved only by the peace process-there is no other way," Lea Rabin urged. "You cannot uproot terror; it will hide and find a way to come out again.... My husband said, 'We shall fight terror as if there is no peace and we shall fight for peace as if there is no terror.' We shall not yield, we have to go on with the peace process. Why we don't go on is another question."
Four years after Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat extended their hands before the world on the White House lawn, the peace process in the Middle East is, at best, now in abeyance; at worst, it has ground to a permanent halt. This year has produced stalled talks and renewed distrust among Netanyahu and Arafat-the result primarily of a debate concerning an Israeli pullout in Hebron and three suicide bombings by Islamic militants in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The most recent bombing earlier this month prompted an "internal closure" that has confined Palestinians to their towns in the West Bank and prohibited them from traveling.
At once lamenting the present situation in the Middle East and looking ahead to a brighter day on the horizon, Lea Rabin offered in moving words her firm hope for an eventual peace.
"The seeds for peace have already been planted widely in the Middle East," she closed. "We are at a point of no return for peace. Someday, and I don't know which day, a bell shall toll-the sound of the train of peace moving again, toward its final destination."
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