A Nobel Peace Prize Winner Worthy of the Title
We have been known to ridicule the Nobel Peace Prize Committee for their absurd choices—Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, the other guy, name escapes me, big ears—but they got at least one right: Yitzak Rabin.
And look how he planned to achieve peace:
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin: Ratification of the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement
The Knesset
October 5, 1995* No Palestinian State: “We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”
* No return to ‘67 borders: “The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”
* Control of Jordan Valley: “The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”
* Gush Katif as model: “The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.”
* All settlements remain intact during interim period: “I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”
* (During interim period) “The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”
Even if the current Democratic president doesn’t remember the negotiations conducted by the previous Democratic president, it would seem to me he has a Secretary of State who was around at the time and might recall the events.
Unless he doesn’t listen to her.
Rabin might have been willing to seek peace with the Palestinians, but never through weakness and surrender. How long ago that seems.