Yitzhak Rabin to rush ahead, create facts, realize its explicit and implicit meaning. For example, release all the prisoners at once, stop all settlement activity, open wide the passage between Gaza and the West Bank, start serious negotiations immediately in order to achieve the final agreement even before the date set for its completion (1999). And, more than anything else, infuse all contacts between Israel and the Palestinians with a new spirit, to conduct them "on the eye-to-eye level," with mutual respect.
Rabin did not follow this path. He was, by nature, a slow,
cautious person, devoid of dramatic flair (unlike Menachem Begin, for example).
I compared him at the time to a victorious general who has
succeeded in breaking through the enemy's front, and then, instead of throwing all his forces into the breach, remains fixed to the spot, allowing his opponents to regroup their forces and form a new front. After gaining victory over the "Greater Israel" camp and routing the settlers, he allowed them to start a counter-offensive, which reached its climax in his murder.
Oslo was meant to be a historic turning point. It should have put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is a clash between an irresistible force (Zionism) and an immovable object (the Palestinians). This did not happen. The Zionist attack goes on, and the Palestinian resistance becomes more extreme.
It is impossible to know what would have happened if Yigal Amir had not pulled the trigger. In Rabin's days, too, settlements were being built at a hectic pace and there was no serious attempt at starting serious negotiations. But relations between Rabin and Arafat were gradually getting closer, mutual trust was being established and the process might have gathered momentum. So Rabin was murdered, and a decade later Arafat was murdered, too.
But the problem of the Oslo agreement goes far beyond the
personal fate of its creators.
Lacking a clear and agreed-upon aim, the Oslo agreement gave rise to a situation that has almost no precedent. That was not understood at the time, nor is it clearly understood today.
Usually, when a national liberation movement reaches its goal, the change takes place in one move. On a certain day, the French ruled Algeria; on the morrow it was taken over by the freedom fighters. The governance of South Africa was transferred from the white minority to the black majority in one sweep.
In Palestine, an entirely different situation was created: a Palestinian Authority with state-like trappings was indeed set up, but