RABIN’S LEGACY : The Soldier Behind the Peace

Imet Yitzhak Rabin in 1967, shortly after the end of the Six-Day War. Then a professor of government at Harvard, I had been invited to Israel to give some lectures, one of which was attended by most of the senior generals. Afterward, Rabin walked with me through Tel Aviv. It was in the afterglow of his stunning victory, and people were coming up to shake his hand, even to touch his shoulder. Though Rabin acted as if he were oblivious to the attention, his smile conveyed a different message. Occasionally, he would mutter the gruff comment of a humble man seeking to convey that, however pleased he might be by the attention, no special recognition was due for having done no more than his duty, but also no less.

Rabin became a close friend when we both served in Washington. But how does one describe a friendship with a man so reticent, so reluctant to impose his emotions and yet so deeply caring? Rabin was brilliantly analytical, but analysis was not his end; it was in the service of the causes in which he deeply believed, though they became more explicit in his conduct than in his rhetoric. So, if I describe my understanding of the impulses that moved my friend, it will not be able to convey the luminous integrity that defined Rabin’s charisma--a man who distrusted public relations and the professionals of charisma.

A military man, Rabin taught himself, step by reluctant step, the grammar of peace. Through a lifetime of service to the security of his country, he became convinced that Israel’s long-term security required it to go beyond the accumulation of military power. His insight was that his people owed it to themselves to dare to attempt the peace of reconciliation, not merely the peace of strength. His funeral was a testament to how well he had succeeded in elevating security to a moral dimension.

Rabin would have been the last person to trade international approval for Israeli strength. But he was a wise enough soldier to understand that moral consensus is itself a vital element of strength.

In his dealings with me, Rabin eschewed appeals to our common religion in favor of elaborating common Israeli-U.S. interests. He considered this task too important to have confused it with displays of charm. And yet, his impact was profound, because he would face reality wherever it might lead him and however painful this might prove to his instincts.

That destination turned out to be what has come to be called the peace process--almost as if it were some technical enterprise. Rabin entered the process reluctantly, suspicious of any alterations in the territorial status quo. After the 1973 war, he became convinced that Israel should strive to husband its resources, especially its human resources. Recognizing that Israel needed maneuvering room, he participated in the disengagement agreements with Egypt, Syria and again with Egypt. At first, his motivation was largely tactical. But as the process gained momentum, through comprehensive peace accords with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, finally to the wrenching breakthrough with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993, peace became Rabin’s vocation.

It was not an easy journey. Like so many of his countrymen, Rabin hated to trade the tangible benefits of territory for intangible gains in international recognition and mitigation of Arab hostility. He knew better than most that the concessions being demanded of Israel were permanent, while the contributions of the other side were intangible and more easily revoked.

At first, Rabin would speak of “a piece of peace for a piece of land.” But he was far too sophisticated to believe in the segmentation of peace. He never doubted that the process would be painful and that there was not likely to be a clear-cut terminus. But the Jewish people, having lived in ghettos for a thousand years, should not, in Rabin’s view, turn their national home into a new ghetto, cut off from the rest of humanity by growing philosophical and political alienation.

Rabin never resorted to rhetoric describing peace as some nirvana. As a sabra--that is, an Israeli born in Israel--his life had consisted of variations of struggle. But if Rabin ever permitted himself a display of emotion, it was when he spoke of Israeli soldiers killed in battle and of families decimated by Israel’s endless wars. He did not promise an end to the exertion; he wanted to contribute to an end of the bloodshed. He painted no vistas of bliss, but neither would he resign himself to the doom of constant warfare.

Toward that end, Rabin hesitantly faced the reality that there are only three solutions to the problem of interaction between the Israeli and Arab populations on the West Bank: integration into Israel; some kind of colonial status, or a type of autonomy that implies some kind of statehood. Integration having been rejected by both the Israeli and Arab communities, and with colonial status for the West Bank certain to isolate Israel, Rabin recognized that autonomy is the only realistic option--though that autonomy would sooner or later translate into some kind of Palestinian statehood.

Rabin was determined to use the peace process to define security frontiers along the Jordan and in the Judean hills, which Israel would not abandon, whatever the legal status of the West Bank. And he attempted to counteract the risks of terrorism by allying with Jordan. In so doing, he expected to work out a pattern of coexistence that would encourage moderation among Palestinians and give Yasser Arafat an incentive to practice restraint.

Not all of Rabin’s objectives were reached in his lifetime. But he was ever inching toward them. I had a long lunch with him two weeks before he was murdered. He commented wryly about the assaults upon him, because he sought to trade territories conquered by armies under his command to prevent another conflict. Rabin thought Jordan and Israel would, between them, be able to prevent the West Bank from becoming radicalized or to neutralize a radical Palestinian entity if it arose. He was confident of achieving a military arrangement far more secure than the 1967 line.

Rabin was not some mystic sprung from the desert preaching peace in the abstract. He was a warrior who learned on the battlefields the imperatives of reconciliation. He was a thinker who did not shrink from the sphere of power. Not demanding illusory perfection as a prerequisite to action, Rabin had the ability to translate his vision into gradual measures to approach his goal in stages.

Recently, a friend of Rabin telephoned to tell me that the prime minister had just had the difficult duty of consoling the mother of a young officer killed in a raid that Rabin had ordered to free a hostage. What made the task especially painful was that the son’s father had died in the 1973 war and that the boy, having already completed his tour of duty, had volunteered for this last assignment. The prime minister, said our mutual friend, would no doubt appreciate a phone call.

When I reached Rabin, he spoke in the monosyllabic manner he adopted whenever he did not want to burden others with his pain. Finally, I said: “You know, Yitzhak, I think that all your life has been a preparation for the present phase.” No more than at our first meeting was Rabin willing to elevate what he considered his duty into a universal cause. “We shall see,” he replied. And we have.*