A Golden OpportunityA Golden OpportunityIt is perhaps too early to assess the effect of Yitzhak Rabin's assassination on Israel's political culture. The irony of the current situation is glaring, almost blinding. Rabin, the ultimate hawk, the hero of the 1967 war and the infamous bone-breaker of Palestinian boys during the intifada, died as a symbol of peace at the hand of a Zionist extremist.
More than 300,000 came to mourn him in Tel Aviv on 12 November, most of them young people. They listened silently to a moving speech by his widow, Leah, and then to an impressive concert in which many Israeli pop stars eagerly participated. The words "time for peace, stop the violence" could be heard again and again. It was an Israeli Woodstock, and Israeli youth sounded like the 1960s' generation in the US. Against this background, the true nature of the late prime minister, and the justified criticism of some of his more dubious policies, has become almost irrelevant. Can any reader picture Richard Nixon being killed by a Ku Klux Klan assassin at a demonstration attended by anti-Vietnam war veterans? This far- fetched analogy perhaps best illustrates. what took place in Tel Aviv on 4 November
Rabin died a few moments after singing the Song of Peace for the first time in his life. This secular hymn of the peace movement was written in 1969, and was often sung in demonstrations against Rabin himself, especially when he served Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as minister of defence and was widely regarded as the leader of the pro-Likud trend inside Labour, whose animosity to Shimon Peres (then the Labour leader) was more pronounced than his differences of opinion with Shamir.
The extreme right's hatred of Rabin's recognition of the PLO and the Oslo Accords assumed the form of a personal slander campaign which eventually led to his death. This tragic twist in his career has changed his domestic and international image. The actual facts of his meager concessions to Arafat, his insistence that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories will not be removed and his expansionist views on Greater Jerusalem remain an authentic historical truth, but this is now almost irrelevant. The assassin, 25- year old religious nationalist Ylgal Amir, saw to it that Rabin will always remain a symbol of peace among Israeli doves.
About ten minutes before the assassination, Rabin made a public gesture of reconciliation not only with the left, but also with his old enemy Peres. The dour, unemotional prime minister delighted the huge crowd by embracing his foreign minister on the stage. It was undoubtedly sincere, since Rabin, although capable of cruelty, did not know how to lie. Four days before his death Rabin warmly praised "my friend and partner" Peres on TV. In this interview on 1 November, Rabin, for the first time, condemned the "racist assumption" that Arab members of the Knesset could not be a legitimate part of his government's majority.
Many Israeli commentators (before the assassination) wrote that Rabin spoke like a man transformed, because of his use of ideological rather than pragmatic reasons for his policies. All these factors converged to make his death a rallying point for a pro-peace and anti-racist resurgence, unparalleled in Israel's history. It may be crude to say that in his death Rabin served the cause of peace more than in his entire life, but "crude" does not necessarily mean "untrue".
The conservative right in Israel is undergoing an agonizing process of soul- searching since it cannot possibly cope with the strong current of pro-Labour expressions of loyalty, especially by a huge number of young people. The anti- Likud camp ranges from Labour supporters to Communists, but it has always lacked symbols, songs, flags and emotional rallying cries. This has changed beyond recognition, and the Rabin cult is gathering relentless momentum.
Bibi Netanyahu and his colleagues realise that the radical right will not lose much support, since its hard-core adherents are hardly moved by the assassination and its aftermath. But the Likud's centre-right voters, mostly secular, are shaken to the core. The crucial centre, the floating voters, may abandon Likud for good. Netanyahu is trying to launch a rapid damage-control campaign, but his position at the moment is truly unenviable.
The prestigious Dahaf poll, published in Yediot Aharonot on 10 November, was read by at least two million Israelis. The findings were clear: 54 per cent said they would vote for Peres as prime minister; only 23 per cent would prefer Netanyahu. This is fairly important, since, for the first time, Israelis will vote directly for a prime minister in 1966.
The poll was conducted on 7-8 November, and it should be taken with a pinch of salt. It does, however, reflect the dominant of the electorate at the moment and Netanyahu cannot afford to ignore it. At least for the time being, he will try to collaborate with the more soft-spoken "wet conservatives", like former minister of justice Dan Meridor, and keep his close supporters from the pro-settler right wing at arm's length.
This will not be easy. Netanyahu has surrounded himself with extremists like Tzahi Hanegbi, Uzi Landau, Yehoshua Matsa and Dov Shilanski, all of them allies of the most radical settlers. These politicians used insulting and threatening language towards the late prime minister, often branding him as "traitor". The fact that such extremists form Netanyahu's inner circle is very damaging for the Likud leader in particular and his party in general.
This process has been strongly enhanced by Leah Rabin's open accusations against Netanyahu. She is almost a sacred public figure at the moment, and her attitude to Netanyahu inflicts untold damage on his reputation.
Ironically, this turn of events gives Peres an ideal opportunity to win the next general election (perhaps even to bring it forward), and to push the peace process forward rapidly and vigorously. He has a mandate to do so, not only from his slender majority in the Knesset, but also from the bulk of the Israeli public.
The immediate tasks, like arresting all the conspirators to kill Rabin and repressing the fascist elements among the settlers and their supporters, now occupy the media. This is crucially important, of course, for every democrat and peace-loving Israeli. But the changing political map is even more important. It can be safely maintained that the left and the centre-left have been strengthened, and their resolve to struggle for their values has never been firmer. On the other hand, Peres and his friends from the Zionist left still refuse to grant the necessary concessions for peace, especially over Jerusalem and the removal of settlements. The international acclaim for Israel under Peres is interpreted here, quite rightly in my opinion, as an indication that the world approves of Israel as it is under Labour, and does not require further tangible concessions.
This, and the surge of self-righteousness by liberal and secular Israelis, amongst whom Rabin belonged during his last year in office, means that Peres will not hasten to make excessive concessions to the Palestinians. Arafat was excluded from Rabin's funeral for dubious security reasons. But the legitimacy conferred by Arafat on Rabin and Peres made the vast Arab participation in the ceremony possible. Arafat has already paid for the goods in advance, but the pressure on Peres to deliver has never been weaker. It is doubtful whether Peres will be more dovish in his actual policies than his predecessor, and one can only hope the golden opportunity for a breakthrough, based on the manifest victory of the peace camp inside Israel, will not be squandered.