Every year, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin at Mount Herzl. He sits alongside Rabin's family members, listens to speeches about the terrible atmosphere of incitement that preceded the assassination, and is sure he had nothing to do with it.
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He even declared Rabin was not a traitor; so what do all these people want from him? He tried convincing them at first, but quickly realized he would have no one's sympathy. He would simply have to bear to listen to that which he did not want to hear. For him, coming to the annual memorial service had become a nightmare.
And so this year, he decided not to attend. Netanyahu's decision dominated the headlines, with him secretly enjoying the media's preoccupation with the story. His supporters tried to explain his move, his opponents criticized him. Typical Netanyahu.
He opposed the Oslo Accords, but was in favor of striking a deal with Jordan. In his address during the annual Knesset meeting in Rabin's memory, the opposition leader explained that the Right was not opposed to peace because it supported the 1993 Israeli-Jordan peace treaty.
In doing so, he attempted to present himself as a responsible statesman who opposed peace deals he viewed as bad and supported agreements he viewed as good. But surely he knows that without a prior agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, the treaty with Jordan would have never seen the light of day.
Syria and Jordan sought to present a united Arab front in the peace talks being held at the same time in Washington. They believed it would lead to more Israeli concessions.
Then-Syrian President Hafez Assad met with the delegations ahead of each round of talks in Washington – within the framework of the 1991 Madrid Conference – while then-Jordanian King Hussein sought to ensure that an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would not flood his country with more refugees.
The Oslo Accords allowed the Palestinians to strike a separate deal with Israel without adhering to demands by Jordan and Syria. Amman and Damascus were shocked to find out about the deal that was struck behind their backs. Jordan, in particular, was furious with Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Both countries concluded they no longer needed to wait for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement for them to strike their own deals.
King Hussein was more determined than Assad, and so the very next day after the signing of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, an Israeli-Jordanian memorandum – which had been drafted a year earlier – was signed at the same location.
King Hussein told me personally that the Israeli-Palestinian agreement (which he was not fond of) is what allowed him to sign a separate deal with the Jewish state.
Almost all Knesset members at the time supported the peace deal with Jordan, including those who thought it was essentially a Palestinian state that would support the Palestinian struggle and force Israel into territorial compromises.
As such, those who support the peace deal with Jordan but oppose the Oslo Accords are tantamount to Yigal Alon, who in 1978 supported the peace treaty with Egypt, but opposed to the evacuation of Israeli settlements from the Sinai Peninsula.
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