My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (39 page)

In the decade after the Yom Kippur War, Beilin became the promising young thinker of Labor. In 1977 he was Shimon Peres’s aide and Labor Party spokesperson. By 1984 he was cabinet secretary of a Likud-Labor coalition government. Then he became a peace entrepreneur. In 1987, he stood by Shimon Peres’s side as the foreign minister tried to negotiate peace with Jordan’s King Hussein. In 1989, he held indirect talks with a PLO representative in The Hague. In 1990, he signed a joint Israeli-Palestinian declaration in Jerusalem. After Yossi Sarid left
Labor and became marginalized, Beilin took his place as the great white hope of peace. He was the man seen most likely to fashion the historic conciliation between Israel and the Palestinians.

In June 1992, Yitzhak Rabin led Labor to victory in the national elections and formed a center-left government. Rabin despised Beilin and Beilin disdained Rabin, but the opportunity was irresistible. After the failure of the Lebanon War and after the Palestinian uprising of 1987–92, the Right was crushed. For the first time ever, there was a peace majority in the Knesset. The prime minister was committed to reaching an interim agreement with the local Palestinian leadership within six to nine months. A man like Beilin wouldn’t miss such an opportunity. A man like Beilin would not wait for the prime minister to lead the way to peace.

As deputy foreign minister, Beilin acts on his own accord. On December 4, 1992, he sends his envoy, Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, to a clandestine, unauthorized meeting in London with the PLO’s finance minister, Abu Ala. On January 20, 1993, he sends Hirschfeld and another envoy, Dr. Ron Pundak, to negotiate with Abu Ala in Sarpsborg, south of Oslo. On February 11, 1993, he sends Hirschfeld and Pundak to a second round of talks in Sarpsborg. Prime Minister Rabin and Foreign Minister Peres don’t have a clue, but in Sarpsborg a serious document is being drafted. It is agreed that Israel will withdraw its forces from the Gaza Strip, consent to an autonomous Palestinian administration in the West Bank, and open direct negotiations regarding a final status accord.

Only in mid-February 1993 does Beilin show Peres the draft of the Norway paper. He downplays the matter and in a sense deceives his superior. Though he informs Peres, Peres does not fully comprehend the significance of the Sarpsborg talks. Therefore, when the foreign minister reports to the prime minister, neither of them really gets it. Rabin is not keen on the plan, but he does not instruct Peres to stop the negotiations. The befuddlement of Israel’s top two statesmen plays into Beilin’s hand. Just as Yehuda Etzion, Pinchas Wallerstein, and Hanan Porat extracted from the 1975 Rabin-Peres government a vague approval to settle in Samaria, Beilin extracts from the 1993 Rabin-Peres government a vague approval to negotiate with the PLO. There is a crack in the dam. A speedy process is under way.

In the spring of 1993, three additional rounds of talks are held. In
May, the director general of the foreign ministry, Uri Savir, joins the Israeli team in Norway. In early June, Yoel Zinger, legal adviser and Rabin confidant, comes aboard. On June 6, 1993, Rabin instructs Peres to halt negotiations. It seems he has suddenly realized how significant they are and panicked. A few days later he acquiesces. Now the negotiations center on mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO. They are navigated by a team of four who meet secretly every weekend in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Herzliya: Rabin, Peres, Beilin, and Zinger. But the lead navigator is Deputy Foreign Minister Beilin. He is the only Israeli who knows where he is heading and the only one who understands the meaning of every move. He is the one leading the prime minister and the foreign minister—and the national agenda.

“Did you ever discuss the historic significance of what you were doing?” I ask. “Never,” answers Beilin with coolheaded candor. “Did you discuss the risks involved?” “Never.” “Did you consider alternatives?” “No.” “Did you realize you were on the road to establishing a Palestinian state?” “I did, though Rabin and Peres—not quite. We assumed that the Oslo talks were a secret channel that would remain secret. The political outcome was supposed to be a limited autonomy agreement between the Israeli government and the local Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. No one foresaw the historic handshake between Rabin and Arafat. No one knew that Israel’s partner would be the Palestine Liberation Organization. What the Israeli team dealt with were details. Much thought was given to minor matters that in retrospect had no real importance.”

At the end of July, as their self-confidence rises, the Palestinians say they will not sign the interim agreement if there is no mutual recognition. Rabin is outraged, but by now he is trapped. He has locked himself into a commitment to political breakthrough, and as there is no breakthrough with Syria, the Palestinians are his only chance. Therefore he yields once again to Palestinian demands and walks the path on which Beilin is leading him. On August 18, Rabin authorizes Shimon Peres to secretly sign the agreement in Oslo. On September 10, Yitzhak Rabin recognizes the PLO. Then, on September 13, Rabin surrenders to a highly significant last-minute maneuver by Arafat, changing the phrase “Palestinian team” in the agreement’s preamble to “PLO.” An hour later, the prime minister of Israel goes out to the White House lawn
with the president of the United States and the leader of the Palestinian people and makes history. Yossi Beilin sits in one of the back rows on the lawn, not quite believing what he is seeing. He brought Rabin and Peres here. He brought Israel here. He touches peace.

“I’ll tell you how I see it,” I say to Beilin. “To begin with, you were not a great believer in peace with the Palestinians. Following the Yom Kippur trauma, you wanted peace, and you realized that occupation was dangerous, and you thought an agreement that would return the West Bank to Jordan would solve the problem. But by the end of 1988, Jordan’s King Hussein no longer wanted anything to do with the West Bank. And by 1992 your next go-to option, negotiating with the local Palestinian leadership, was no longer on the table. All you were left with was Arafat. But Arafat was no easy matter. Arafat represented the entire Palestinian people—not just the residents of the occupied territories, but also the Palestinian refugees and the Israeli Palestinians. Arafat was the embodiment of the armed struggle against Zionism. So if there was to be a peace agreement with Arafat, it was to be completely different from the one discussed with the local Palestinians. An Arafat peace agreement should have been based on a Palestinian about-face: recognizing the Jewish people, recognizing the Jewish national movement and its national rights, relinquishing the Palestinians’ right of return.

“In hindsight, it seems clear that you did not think about the religious, cultural, and existential dimensions of the conflict. You did not remember the Arab rejection of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Arab outrage at the UN partition plan of 1947, and the calamity wrought by the war of 1948. All you saw was the relatively easy problem of 1967, namely, occupation, which you thought you could solve in a relatively easy manner. That a person of your intelligence was tempted to make peace in such a hasty way is unconscionable. Rather than use the unique circumstances of the early 1990s to begin a long process that would eventually lead to a true peace, you opted for the appearance of peace. You thought you were manipulating Peres and Rabin, but in reality it was the Palestinians who manipulated you. Although they were at a strategic disadvantage, they still managed to knock you to the ground.”

Beilin listens quietly and patiently. One of his virtues is his ability
to remain detached, ice-cold. “If it were up to me,” he says, “I would have gone for a final-status agreement right there and then. I would have solved all the core issues you mentioned in a short time. But in 1993 Rabin did not want a final comprehensive peace. I had to sew a suit he would be willing to wear. I knew the suit was far from perfect. I knew that any delay would serve the enemies of peace. But since I was not calling the shots, I had no other way. I had to work within a set of given circumstances. Immediately after the White House ceremony I flew to Tunisia and started to negotiate a real peace agreement with Arafat’s most senior deputy, Mahmoud Abbas. It took time, and meanwhile things happened. Baruch Goldstein committed the Hebron massacre in February 1994. Then Yigal Amir murdered Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. Events happened that I could not foresee. To this day I am convinced that if Rabin had not been assassinated, peace would not have been assassinated. We would not be having this conversation because Israel would have peace with Palestine, Syria, and the Arab world.”

The peace story is also my story. For upper-middle-class secular Ashkenazi Israelis like me, peace was not only a political idea; in the last quarter of the twentieth century, it defined our identity. Peace was the social integrator and the pillar of fire of our tribe. Peace was our religion. In 1965, when I was in third grade, our most sacred song was the peace song “Tomorrow.” But the peace promised by the song was abstract. It had soldiers shedding their uniforms, but it had no Arabs. It was a peace one yearns for but doesn’t really believe in. When I was in tenth grade, our most sacred song was the “Song for Peace.” The peace of this song was one of protest: it was the chilling outcry of dead soldiers. It had defiance, but it, too, had no Arabs. The peace of the “Song for Peace” was angry and confrontational and political, but it was amorphous just like its predecessor. Still, its demand for peace was exhilarating.

The transition from the peace of “Tomorrow” to the peace of the “Song for Peace” characterized my generation. After the Six Day War and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, we believed peace was possible. After the Yom Kippur War we—rightly—thought Israel had missed the opportunity to prevent war by making peace. After the political upheaval of 1977, the establishment of the settlements, and the
Lebanon War, peace became our plaint against the Right and the settlers. Peace was not based on a sober historical diagnosis, and it did not offer a realistic strategic prognosis. Peace was an emotional, moral, and intellectual stance vis-à-vis an ongoing, intolerable conflict, and an Israel changing its face.

When I was in high school I would often go to peace movement gatherings. I listened with admiration as luminaries like the novelist Amos Oz, the journalist Uri Avnery, and the former colonel Meir Pa’il promised peace. When I was a soldier on leave I used to participate in the thrilling Jerusalem torch-bearing peace marches, and I listened with devotion as Yossi Sarid and Yossi Beilin promised peace. When I was a university student I was an enthusiastic activist in the peace movement. I wrote and distributed peace pamphlets, and I believed with all my heart in the promise of peace. But only when I turned thirty and began listening seriously to what Palestinians were actually saying did I realize that the promise of peace was unfounded. It played a vital moral role in our lives, but it had no empirical basis. The promise of peace was benign, but it was bogged down by a systematic denial of the brutal reality we live in.

I worked out a theory. The theory assumed we lived in a tragedy: an almost eternal struggle between two peoples sharing a homeland and fighting over it. For seventy years we Jews had the stamina needed to withstand this tragedy. We were vital enough to be jolly and optimistic while enduring an ongoing conflict. But as fatigue wore us down, we began to deny the tragedy. We wanted to believe there was no tragic decree at the heart of our existence. So we had to pretend that it was not by tragic circumstances that our fate was decided, but by our own deeds. The territories we conquered in 1967 gave us an excellent pretext for this much-needed pretense, as it allowed us to concentrate on an internal conflict of our own making. The Right said, “If we only annex the West Bank, we’ll be safe and sound.” The Left said, “If we only hand over the West Bank, we’ll have peace.” The Right said, “Our dead died because of the Left’s illusions,” while the Left said, “Our dead died because of the Right’s fantasies.” Rather than face a tragic reality imposed on us from without, we chose to create a simplistic narrative of Right against Left. It’s not the Arabs’ fault, it’s the Jews’. It’s not the Middle East, it’s the Israeli government. It’s not the fundamental Israeli condition
but some specific mistake made by some specific Israeli politician. In an ingenious way, we turned the tragedy in which we live into a morality play. We created a virtual reality that enables us to blame ourselves rather than face the cruel reality we are trapped in.

From this general theory I worked out a theory of the Israeli Left: its fundamental flaw was that it had never distinguished between the issue of occupation and the issue of peace. Regarding the occupation, the Left was absolutely right. It realized that occupation was a moral, demographic, and political disaster. But regarding peace, the Left was somewhat naïve. It counted on a peace partner that was not really there. It assumed that because peace was needed, peace was feasible. But the history of the conflict and the geostrategy of the region implied that peace was not feasible. The correct moral position of the Left was compromised by an incorrect empirical assumption.

Why did the Left cling to this empirically incorrect assumption? Because this assumption enabled it to deny the tragedy of 1948 and to ignore the schism between its new liberal values and the Zionist predicament. It is well known that the euphoria of 1967 led the Right to believe that Greater Israel was possible. What is less generally acknowledged is that the same euphoria led the Left to believe that Greater Peace was possible. The struggle between these two fantasies empowered both sides and enabled Israelis to escape reality. Instead of sticking to the sound, rational position of ending occupation simply because it is immoral and destructive, the Left endorsed the unsound and irrational belief that ending occupation would bring peace. There was a tendency to see the settlers and settlements as the source of evil and to overlook Palestinian positions that were not occupation-based. There was a magic belief that Israel was the supreme power that could end the conflict by ending occupation. The Left adopted the peace illusion because it had a messianic dimension: it promised Israel a new existential condition. It was to replace the badlands under our feet with the open blue skies of an imaginary future.