Be Strong and of Good Courage by Dennis Ross

Author:Dennis Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2019-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

RABIN’S EVOLUTION ON THE PALESTINIANS

In his memoirs, written after he resigned as prime minister in 1977, Rabin addresses the Palestinian problem, saying there is “really no ideal solution” to it.* Unlike Golda Meir, who in 1969 denied that the Palestinians were a people, Rabin was not one to deny history or reality. He acknowledged that a “terrible human tragedy has taken place” in reference to what had happened to the Palestinians. But, in his words, “we believe that it was created by the Arab countries in 1947–48, when they rejected the United Nations’ partition plan and continued to struggle… against the very existence of the State of Israel.” Nonetheless, that did not relieve Israel of the responsibility “to become an active partner in seeking a solution to the problem, for unless it is resolved the chances are poor that comprehensive peace will ever be realized in the Middle East.”44

At this time, he outlined three options for dealing with the Palestinians. First, the option “advocated by Palestinian extremists”: “create a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Second, the option promoted by then Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and his Likud party: grant the Palestinians limited autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, and they can choose either Israeli or Jordanian citizenship. “But regardless of the citizenship of its Arab residents, the West Bank and Gaza will become an integral part of the sovereign state of Israel.” Or the third option, the one Rabin and the Labor Party favored: create a Jordanian-Palestinian state. Within the original borders of Mandatory Palestine—which included Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza—and Jordan, Rabin said, “there should be two states: Israel, basically a Jewish state (though not all Jews will live there and not only Jews will comprise its population), and to the east of it, a Jordanian-Palestinian state that would include considerable portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.… This Jordanian-Palestinian state will allow for the expression of the unique identity of the Palestinians in whatever form they choose to exercise their right of self-determination.”45

Rabin did not pretend this was the perfect solution. It was, in his eyes, the only practical one. Absorbing the Palestinians in sovereign Israel was a nonstarter for him; later, he would explain clearly that to do so would change Israel’s Jewish character and make it either a binational Arab and Jewish state or an apartheid one. And yet Rabin also believed that there was no alternative to permitting the Palestinians to express their “unique identity” in some politically acceptable fashion. But an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza was also not acceptable to him at this time, because he was convinced it would constitute a mortal threat to Israel—not primarily because such a “mini-state” could not “absorb the almost million and half Palestinians who currently reside outside of these two areas,” but rather because such a state would be ruled by the PLO, “the most extreme faction in the Palestinian political spectrum.”46

For Rabin,

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