Professors Ephraim Yaar and Tamar
Hermann of Tel Aviv University report in Haaretz on a poll of
585 interviewees they conducted for the Center for Peace Studies and the Evans
Program for Conflict Resolution Research.
They assert that “the prevailing view today
is that Yitzhak Rabin’s decision to enter the [Oslo] process was
correct.” But the actual poll results described
in the article show that, in fact, there is no prevailing view:
Half
the respondents assessed the decision as right, 39 percent as errant, and the
rest [11 percent] did not know.
poll with a 4.5 percentage point margin of error. The other poll results portray a more pessimistic
picture about the process Rabin initiated, with a result far
outside the margin of error:
At the
same time, it is generally believed that even if he had not been assassinated
and had continued to serve as prime minister, the process Rabin began would not have brought a peace agreement with the
Palestinians to this day. . . .
[A]n
overwhelming majority of 74 percent [expects] that even if Israel withdraws from all the
territories beyond the Green Line and the occupation ends, Palestinian violence
will not stop and may even intensify. Only 19 percent of the Jewish sector thinks ending the occupation and
leaving the territories will bring an end to the violence.
withdrawal from all the territories beyond the Green Line, nor anything close
to what Ehud Barak later offered as part of a “peace process” that
featured increasingly desperate offers with no response from the “partner.” In his last
speech to the Knesset, one month before his assassination, Rabin
outlined his view of the “permanent solution:”
We view the permanent solution in the
framework of 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 4 June 1967 lines.
And these are the main changes, not
all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem,
which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev — as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while
preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and
Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places,
according to the customs of their faiths.
B. The security border of the State
of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of
that term.C. Changes which will include the
addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which
are in the area east of what was the
"Green Line," prior to the Six Day War.D. The establishment of blocs of
settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.
Gush Katif. Gush Katif
— now gone, uprooted unilaterally, by an Israeli government afraid to trust
the people with a referendum (citing instead “polls” for an alleged “prevailing
view”), and destroyed not as part of a “permanent solution,” but rather in
recognition of the failure of the process Rabin began with a different end in mind.
(Hat tip: Lynn-B).