Rabin: Talking Sense to Israelis

The change in government brought about by last June’s Israeli elections produced immediate welcome changes in Israeli foreign policy. Its new proposals and--hardly less important--the new attitudes Israel’s negotiators have brought to the Middle East peace talks are the most visible example.

Behind all this is, of course, a fundamental shift in governing philosophy. The ideology that directed Israeli policies for 15 years under the Likud government has been cast aside. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, head of the new Labor-dominated coalition, has now explicitly addressed what is perhaps the central tenet of that discarded ideology: the notion of a Greater Land of Israel.

The political antecedents of this idea go back generations. At its nationalistic core is the belief that Israel’s modern boundaries should reflect the Israel of the Bible. The West Bank, in this view, is Israel’s by rightful inheritance, not something to be divided. The 1947 vote partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Palestinian Arab states was accepted by the mainstream Jewish leadership in Palestine at that time--though rejected by all Arabs--but opposed by those who would later run Likud.

“We must,” said Rabin in a major speech, “cut ourselves off from the religion of the Greater Land of Israel and remember that the strength of a nation is not measured in the territories it controls, but by its beliefs and its ability to develop social, economic and security systems.”

While this may be essentially a restatement of historic Labor policy, its contemporary relevance is clear. Israel gained control of the West Bank in 1967--Jordan had annexed it in 1950--not through a war of aggression but in a war of defense. But the security brought by extended boundaries has never been an unmixed blessing. A large Arab population--now about 1.2 million--came with the land. Many Israelis have long recognized that governing and--inevitably--repressing this hostile population is destructive to Israel’s own moral basis and democratic principles. Likud didn’t much care about that. Labor does.

And so Rabin is talking sense to Israelis, but no less compellingly to Israel’s antagonists. He is ready for a pragmatic compromise over the disputed territories, prepared to exchange land for peace, without ideological reservations. But that offer, as he made clear, is not of unlimited duration. The June elections opened a window of opportunity, though how long it might remain open depends very much on how pragmatically the Arab participants in the peace process respond. Rabin has proclaimed an end to crippling ideology. The ideology of non-acceptance, non-compromise, non-recognition on the other side must be discarded as well.