Yitzhak Rabin: From Hawk to Nobel Prize Peacemaker

Yael S. Aronoff

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139814843.006

5 - Yitzhak Rabin: From Hawk to Nobel Prize Peacemaker

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Yael S. Aronoff

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Yael S. Aronoff: Affiliation:
Michigan State University

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Summary

Those who believe that the Palestinian issue is the obstacle to peace are mistaken . . . those that claim that it is the key to peace, the formula for peace, the means to achieve peace . . . are simply misreading reality.

– Yitzhak Rabin, 1976

We need to sober up and to recognize the reality that there is a Palestinian entity in the territories. An entity that stands on its own, which the Egyptians don’t speak for, which the Syrians don’t speak for, and maybe not even the Jordanians. With that entity, that sits in the territories, who we confront every day in the intifada, with them we are ready to sit. We see in them a partner. We are willing to talk with them.

– Yitzhak Rabin, 1991

Yitzhak Rabin, chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) during the Six-Day War and prime minister from 1974 to 1977 and from 1992 until his assassination in 1995 at age seventy-three, is one of the most dramatic and well-known examples of a hard-liner changing his stance toward a long-standing enemy. In 1988, he was a hawkish defense minister who was known for cracking down on the intifada through force. Thousands of Peace Now activists demonstrated to demand Rabin’s resignation because of his responsibility for the administrative detention of hundreds of Palestinians. Yet only five years later, this same man reluctantly shook the hand of his mortal enemy, Yasser Arafat, after signing the Oslo Accords, which provided for mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel. Only two years from that moment, he stood on a stage singing the song of peace in front of tens of thousands of Peace Now supporters, who were now cheering him on. On that same night, an assassin’s bullet tore through the words of the song that he had placed in his breast pocket and pierced his heart.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: The Political Psychology of Israeli Prime Ministers
When Hard-Liners Opt for Peace
, pp. 100 - 123

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139814843.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

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