My Jewish identity precedes my Israeli identity. I believe that Jewish continuity is the utmost goal. Israel, as far as I'm concerned, in addition to being my homeland, is the most effective tool for ensuring Jewish continuity, especially for those who are not ready to take part in religious rituals.
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The two most important projects that I initiated in the first half of the 1990s – the Taglit-Birthright project and the Oslo Accords, which I believe are two sides of the same coin, even though at first glance they seem distinctly different: Taglit is designed to strengthen the connection between young Jews around the world, and between them and their Israeli peers, and Oslo was intended to lead towards an Israeli-Palestinian agreement focused on a permanent border, guaranteeing a Jewish majority in Israel for many years to come. I see both as main components in ensuring Jewish continuity.
During my lifetime I supported solutions that were supposed to lead to this goal. I supported a Palestinian Jordanian state and the London Agreement from April 1987 between King Hussein and Shimon Peres, which is written, not by chance, in my handwriting. After then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, rejected the agreement, and after Hussein announced in July 1988 that he was giving up his claim to the West Bank in favor of the Palestinians, and after the PLO accepted the famous Security Council Resolution 242 in 1988, I made a public call to open negotiations with him and took action in the Knesset, to repeal the law that prohibited any contact with the PLO.
Yitzhak Shamir surprised many by agreeing to participate in the Madrid Conference of 1991, following which negotiations between delegations from Israel and delegations from Syria and Lebanon began in Washington, also including a joint delegation of the Jordanians and Palestinians, but it soon became clear that he was doing all he could to avoid promoting them. He later admitted that he intended to drag out the talks for ten years. I decided that if the Labor Party would lead the government in the 1992 elections, I would make an effort to overcome the differences between the Israeli and Palestinian positions.
I intended to initiate informal talks between Israeli and Palestinian parties, to bring about agreements on all issues related to the interim settlement, to suggest to Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin that they put the solutions on the table of the heads of delegations, and to get them to sign an agreement of principles, without necessarily knowing how the agreement was reached and who was standing behind it.
When Terje Larsen, head of the Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research, came to me and asked what he could do to help advance the faltering peace process, I brought up the idea of the informal channel and he promised that Norway would host such a channel. We talked about the possibility of talks between Faisal Husseini, the most powerful Palestinian in east Jerusalem, and myself and we met a few days before the elections – Husseini, Larsen, my friend Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, who accompanied me in my contacts with the Palestinian leadership in Jerusalem, and myself. We decided that if the Labor Party wins the elections, and if I have a political position, we will establish a channel of communication in Oslo.
The agreement that Peres hid from me
The plan did not come to fruition due to a development that I did not consider. After the elections, Rabin appointed Peres as Foreign Minister and I was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. After everything was ready for the meeting between Hosseini and myself in Oslo, I brought up the topic during my daily conversation with Peres, at the end of the day. I did not consider going to Norway without informing him of the plan, and I estimated that he would have no objection to it, due to the freedom of action that he had given me in my various positions.
But when I sat down in front of him with the portfolio of topics, I had to talk to him about, I saw that Peres' face had changed from the day before. I asked why he was upset, and he told me that he arranged a meeting with Husseini (with whom he used to meet occasionally), but when he informed Rabin about this meeting, the Prime Minister demanded that this meeting be canceled.
I was very surprised and then Peres revealed a secret to me, that if I had known earlier – I would not have agreed to be appointed as his deputy. He apologized for not notifying me earlier and admitted that he felt very uncomfortable telling me that in exchange for his appointment as foreign minister, he had to promise Rabin that he would not hold any negotiations with the US, or bilateral negotiations with the Arab factors. No more, no less.
Now I had to make a quick decision: if I had told Peres about my intention to meet with Husseini, he would have asked me to refrain from doing so, because Rabin would be convinced that I had traveled on Peres's permission. I decided not to go to Oslo, and not to inform Peres about the possibility of having a channel in Norway. I made up my mind to present the existence of the channel to him and Rabin, only if I have a signed agreement between the parties. I asked Hirschfeld to travel in my place, and instead of Husseini, who did not want to go to Oslo without me. He suggested that Ahmed Kriya (Abu Ala), the Palestinian "Minister of Finance," be appointed as Hirschfeld's interlocutor. The first meeting in Oslo was held on January 20, 1993, four days after the Knesset approved, in its second and third reading, the cancellation of the ban on meetings with PLO members.
I approved for Yair to include his former student, Dr. Ron Pundak, while Abu Ala, Maher al-Kurd, and Hassan Asfur joined him on the Palestinian side. Already in the first talks, it became clear that the PLO representatives, who informed the Israelis that they were representing Arafat, were ready to reach an interim settlement in the form of autonomy in the Gaza Strip and an autonomous zone in Jericho. Issues that seemed impossible to agree on in Washington were settled in Oslo. There were crises, there were difficult moments, and even tears, but an initial paper was already agreed upon after the second round.
Between Oslo and Washington
When Yair and Ron returned to Israel, they were very excited, and it was clear to us that we now had to get the green light from Rabin and Peres, to proceed towards a more detailed document, that included schedules, exact locations, etc. During my daily meeting with Peres, I placed the document on his desk, and after he read it and was very impressed, we held a conversation with Yair and Ron, and Peres said he would show the document to Rabin at their weekly meeting.
I was very tense. Presumably, Peres had to confirm his suspicions to Rabin that he would breach the agreement between them and end the bilateral talks. I feared that because of this, Rabin would announce that he was renouncing the new channel. But Peres returned with Rabin's approval.
I don't know what exactly went on in the conversation between the two, but the deadline Rabin set for an agreement with the Palestinians, and which he repeated in all his public election campaigns, came closer and closer, but he had nothing in hand. His other attempts to send envoys to negotiate with the PLO did not promote the political process, and suddenly a draft agreement was put on his desk that was in line with his own opinions!
We immediately arranged a third meeting with the Palestinians. In the following weeks, Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Uri Savir, and the appointed legal advisor to the ministry, Yoel Singer, joined the talks. The channel remained confidential, but it became official, and Rabin established a four-way forum in Israel that moderated the issues and negotiators who participated in it besides himself – Peres, Singer, and me. He never added another person from any of the bureaus, and in retrospect, Rabin was criticized for this.
The Mutual Recognition
The forum's most important decision was to respond to Abu Ala's proposal and hold secondary negotiations that would try to lead to mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. From the moment this happened, there was no room for my original consideration of holding a "shadow team" behind the scenes, which would submit a document to the parties for signature. The Oslo process was put on stage. The historic recognition between the Jewish and Palestinian national movements, after years of searching for alternatives (mayors, village associations, and non-PLO Palestinians, on the one hand, and non-Zionist Israelis, on the other), was the real upheaval for the Oslo Accords.
In a long conversation between Rabin and myself, I told him that my takeaway from the talks in Oslo is that we have someone to talk to and that it is not worth wasting the "meeting of the stars" that had been created (the PLO's weakness after Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein, the loss of support in the Arab world, the loss of Soviet backing and turning the Hamas into a political threat, as well as President Bill Clinton's need for a significant political move, and Rabin's own commitment to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians), in order to divert the talks towards a permanent settlement, and not suffice with an interim agreement that would only encourage the extremists on both sides to torpedo.
Rabin did not deny the logic of the proposal but opposed it for two reasons. One – if the talks on the permanent agreement fail, he said, it would be very difficult to resume talks on the interim agreement; and second – Oslo is part of the process that began at the Madrid Conference, which adopted Begin's idea for Palestinian self-government for a five year period. When we announce the Oslo Accords, and when the Right wing criticizes us for the move, we can easily prove the connecting thread.
Like a Bar Mitzvah Boy
On September 31, 1993, a hot day in Washington, when the Accords were signed on the lawn of the White House, people from all over the world came to watch the event. I felt like a bar mitzvah boy, with heads of state and foreign ministers coming to shake my hand and congratulate me.
When the agreement was signed, and Clinton, Rabin, and Arafat shook hands – it seemed that a historic peace agreement had been signed. However it was not a peace agreement, and the elating ceremony created exaggerated expectations.
In the fall of 1994, I received a phone call from the Chief Rabbi of Norwegian Jewry Rabbi Michael Melchior, asking me if I was interested in receiving the Nobel Prize. I told him that the ones who should receive the prize are the ones who are taking responsibility for this move, and those are Rabin and Peres. Melchior told me that most members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee are leaning towards the Rabin-Peres-Arafat trio, but committee member, Kåre Kristiansen, was threatening to resign (and indeed did so) if Arafat was awarded the prize. An alternative option was suggested to award the honorable prize to Mahmoud Abbas and me, as the ones who mastered the move behind the scenes. I refused and asked him to apologize on my behalf.
The grip of the Right
The interim agreement became a permanent agreement in Netanyahu's hands, when he demanded that the Palestinians act and cooperate as if there was a peace agreement between the sides. The Palestinians rejected several proposals for a political settlement, and Israel – mainly in the construction of settlements in Judea and Samaria – contributed its share to the elimination of the permanent agreement.
The Oslo Accords failed because they are actually still here. The Right's "success" in perpetuating an interim settlement and expecting it to behave like a peace agreement is costing all parties too much.
The main argument of the Oslo's critics is not that we did not try to reach a permanent agreement in Oslo, but that it was a grave mistake to regard Arafat as a partner, and that he came to the negotiating table with the clear intention of returning to a violent conflict with us.
But the truth is that the disagreement between us is on the question of the consent to divide the western Land of Israel between the Palestinians and us. Those who prefer the "integrity of the land" over a Jewish state under the auspices of a Jewish majority, will not agree to any Palestinian partner.
Oslo's critics tend to forget that the gates of hell for terrorism were opened in February 1994 by a doctor in an IDF uniform, wearing a kippa], who murdered 29 Muslim worshipers in the Cave of the Patriarchs. 40 days later, at the end of the days of Muslim mourning, suicide terrorism began in Hadera and Afula.
Oslo's critics do not see any connection between Ariel Sharon's provocation on the Temple Mount in September 2000 and the Intifada that broke out the next day. They have a paradigm, and they are not interested in any "interference."
The attempts of the Right to find Palestinian partners who would not demand a state for themselves have all resulted in nothing, and even if they had succeeded, they would have very quickly caused a situation by which the Palestinian majority would demand the realization of their just rights. The Palestinians under our rule (such as Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi) were not ready to hold significant political negotiations with us, arguing that only the PLO, under the leadership of Arafat, is the legitimate agent to hold negotiations with Israel.
When we returned from the talks in London in 1987 with a document agreed upon by King Hussein, and which determined that Jordan would take responsibility for the negotiations, with the cooperation of Palestinians who oppose terrorism, the Likud, led by Shamir threw us down all steps, and the king transferred the West Bank into Palestinian hands.
And the main thing – if Oslo was so disastrous, how is it that I have been calling for its abolition for two decades, and all Right-wing governments, including the current one, are eagerly clinging to it?
The biggest obstacle to the division of the land is the fact of the large dispersion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and this problem can be solved by establishing a confederation (modeling the early days of the European Union) between Israel and a Palestinian state, which will allow any settler who wishes to remain in his home as an Israeli citizen and a permanent Palestinian resident, but with a clear border between the two countries, and the extent of its openness will depend on the security situation at the time.
Only those who do not want an agreement, and do not understand its importance, will continue to claim again and again that the disputes are impossible to solve and that there is no partner. Giving up, in my opinion, is giving up on Zionism.
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