My Jewish identity precedes my identity as an Israeli. Jewish continuity, in my view, is the supreme destiny. Israel, as far as I'm concerned, apart from being my native landscape, is the most effective tool for ensuring Jewish continuity, especially for those who are unwilling to take part in religious worship.
The two most important projects I initiated in the first half of the 90s – the Taglit-Birthright project and the Oslo process – are, to me, two sides of the same coin, although at first glance they seem very different: Birthright is intended to strengthen the connection between young Jews around the world and between them and their Israeli peers, and Oslo is intended to lead towards an Israeli-Palestinian agreement centered on a permanent border that guarantees the Jewish majority in Israel for years. I see both as key components in ensuring Jewish continuity.
Throughout my life, I have supported solutions that should have led to this limit. I supported a Jordanian-Palestinian state, and the "London Document" of April 1987, between King Hussein and Shimon Peres, is written, not coincidentally, in my own handwriting. After then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected the document, and after Hussein announced in July 1988 that he was giving up his claim to the West Bank in favor of the Palestinians, and after the PLO adopted the famous Security Council Resolution 1988 in 242, I publicly called for negotiations with him and acted, in the Knesset, to repeal the law that prohibited contacts with the PLO.
Yitzhak Shamir surprised many by agreeing to participate in the Madrid Conference in 1991, following which negotiations began in Washington between delegations from Israel with delegations from Syria and Lebanon, and with a joint delegation of Jordanians and Palestinians, but it soon became clear that he was doing everything possible not to promote them. He himself later admitted that he intended to drag out the talks for ten years. I decided that if in the 1992 elections the Labor Party leads the government, I will make an effort to overcome the gaps between the Israeli and Palestinian positions.
Shimon Peres with Yitzhak Shamir, Photo: Nati Harnik / GPO
My intention was to initiate informal talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials, to bring about agreements on all issues relating to the interim agreement, to suggest to Arafat and Rabin to put the solutions on the table of the heads of delegations, and to bring about their signing of an agreement of principles, without necessarily knowing how the agreement was reached and who was behind it.
When Terje Larsen, who headed the trade union research institute in Norway, came to me and asked what he could do to help advance the faltering peace process, I raised the idea of an informal channel, and he promised that Norway would host such a channel. We talked about the possibility of dialogue between me and Faisal Husseini, the most important Palestinian in East Jerusalem, and a few days before the elections we met – Husseini, Larsen, myself and my friend Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, who accompanied me in my contacts with the Palestinian leadership in Jerusalem. We decided that if the Labor Party wins the elections, and if I have a political role, we will establish a channel for talks in Oslo.
The agreement Peres hid from me
The plan was not implemented due to a development that did not occur to me. After the elections, Yitzhak Rabin appointed Peres as Foreign Minister, and I was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. After everything was ready for the meeting between Husseini and me in Oslo, I brought the subject to my daily conversation with Peres at the end of the day. I never thought of going to Norway without informing him of the move, and I assumed that he would have no objection to it, due to the wide leeway he gave me in my various roles.
But when I sat down with the binder of topics I had to talk to him, I saw that Peres' face was not like yesterday. I asked why he was upset, and he told me that he had arranged a meeting with Faisal Husseini (with whom he often met), but when he informed Rabin, the prime minister demanded that he not hold it.
I was very surprised, and then Peres revealed to me a secret that if he had known, I would not have agreed to be appointed his deputy. He apologized for not informing me earlier, and admitted that he felt very uncomfortable telling me that in return for his appointment as foreign minister, he should have promised Rabin that he would not engage in contacts with the United States and bilateral negotiations with Arab elements. No more and no less.
Now I had to make a quick decision: If I had told Peres about my intention to meet with Husseini, he would have asked me not to do so, because Rabin would be convinced that I had traveled on Peres' behalf. I decided not to go to Oslo, and not to inform Peres of the possibility of having a channel in Norway. I have resolved to present to him and Rabin the existence of the channel only if I have a paper agreed upon between the parties. I asked Hirschfeld to go instead of Husseini, who did not want to go to Oslo without me, Larsen suggested that Hirschfeld's interlocutor be Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), the Palestinian "finance minister." The first meeting in Oslo took place on January 20, 1993, four days after the Knesset approved the revocation of the ban on meetings with PLO members, on second and third readings.
Abu 'Alaa. One of the architects of the agreements, photo: AFP
I approved Yair to bring in his former student, Dr. Ron Pundak, while on the Palestinian side Abu Ala, Maher al-Kurd and Hassan Aspour joined him. From the very first conversation, it became clear that PLO representatives, who informed the Israelis that they were coming in the name of Yasser Arafat, were willing to agree to an interim arrangement in the form of autonomy in the Gaza Strip and an autonomous zone in Jericho. Issues that seemed impossible to agree on in Washington were agreed upon in Oslo. There were crises, there were difficult moments and even tears, but after the second round there was already an agreed preliminary paper.
Between Oslo and Washington
When Yair and Ron returned to Israel, they were very excited, and it was clear to us that from now on we had to get the green light from Rabin and Peres, in order to continue towards a more detailed document, including timetables, exact locations, and things like that. During the daily concluding meeting with Peres, I placed the paper on his desk, and after he read it and was very impressed, we had a conversation with Yair and Ron, and Peres said he would show Rabin the paper at their weekly meeting.
I was very nervous. Ostensibly, Peres should have confirmed to Rabin his suspicions that he would violate the agreement between them and reach out to the bilateral talks, and I feared that because of this, Rabin would announce that he was renouncing the new channel. But Peres returned with approval from Rabin.
I don't know exactly what happened in the conversation between the two, but the date set by Rabin for an agreement with the Palestinians, which he repeated in all his election campaign appearances, was approaching and walking, and he had nothing. His other attempts to send emissaries for dialogue with the PLO did not advance the political process, and suddenly a draft agreement that was consistent with his own perception lands on his desk!
We immediately arranged a third meeting with the Palestinians. In the following weeks, Foreign Ministry Director General Uri Sabir and Legal Advisor-designate Yoel Singer joined the talks. The channel remained secret, but it became official, and in Israel Rabin established a square forum that guided the negotiators who participated in it besides him - Peres, Singer and myself. He was never joined by another person from any of the bureaus, and Rabin was later criticized for this.
Mutual recognition
The Forum's most important decision was to accede to Abu Ala's proposal and hold secondary negotiations that would try to lead to mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel. Once this happened, there was no room for my original thought of having a "shadow team" behind the scenes to submit a document to the parties for signature. The Oslo process found itself on stage. The historic recognition between the Jewish national movement and the Palestinian national movement, after years of searching for substitutes (mayors, village associations and non-PLO Palestinians on the one hand, versus non-Zionist Israelis on the other), was the real earthquake of the Oslo process.
In a lengthy conversation between Rabin and me, I told him that my conclusion from the Oslo talks was that we had someone to talk to, and that it was not worth wasting the "meeting of the stars" that was created (the weakness of the PLO after Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein, the loss of support in the Arab world, the loss of Soviet backing and the turning of Hamas into a political threat, President Clinton's need for a significant diplomatic move, and Rabin's own commitment to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians). In order to divert the talks towards a permanent agreement, and not settle for an interim arrangement that will only incentivize the extremists on both sides to torpedo it.
The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, photo: Meir Partosh
Rabin did not rule out the logic of the proposal, but opposed it for two reasons. First, if the final status talks fail, he said, it will be very difficult to renew talks on the interim agreement. Second, Oslo is part of the process that began with the Madrid Conference, which adopted Begin's idea of Palestinian self-government for five years. When we publish the Oslo Agreement of Principles, and when the right criticizes us for the move, we can easily prove the common thread.
Like a Bar Mitzvah guy
On September 13, 1993, the same warm Washingtonian day the agreement was signed on the White House lawn, people from all over the world arrived there. I felt like a bar mitzvah when heads of state and foreign ministers came up to shake my hand and greet me.
When the agreement was signed, and Clinton, Rabin and Arafat shook hands, it seemed that a historic peace agreement had been signed. But this was not a peace agreement, and the moving ceremony created exaggerated expectations.
In the fall of 1994, I received a phone call from the Chief Rabbi of Norwegian Jewry, Rabbi Michael Melchior. He asked me if I was interested in receiving the Nobel Prize. I told him that the one who should receive the prize is the one who takes responsibility for this move, and these are Rabin and Peres.
Clinton. Hospitality on the White House lawn, Photo: AP
Melchior told me that most members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee lean toward the Rabin-Peres-Arafat trio, but committee member Kara Kritiansen threatens to resign (and did) if Arafat wins the prize. An alternative option was raised to award the honorable prize to Mahmoud Abbas and me, who managed the process behind the scenes. I refused and asked him to apologize on my behalf.
The attachment of the right
Netanyahu's interim agreement has become a permanent agreement, demanding that the Palestinians act and cooperate as if there were a peace agreement between the sides. The Palestinians rejected several proposals for a political settlement, and Israel – mainly in establishing settlements in the territories – did its part to push the final status agreement away.
The Oslo Accords failed because they are still here. The right's "success" in perpetuating an interim agreement and expecting it to behave like a peace agreement costs all sides too dearly.
The main argument of the Oslo critics is not that we did not try to reach a permanent settlement in Oslo, but that seeing Arafat as a partner was a serious mistake, and that he came to the negotiating table with a clear intention of returning to a violent confrontation with us.
But the truth is that the disagreement between us is over the willingness to divide the western Land of Israel between the Palestinians and us. Anyone who prefers the "integrity of the land" to a Jewish state under the auspices of a Jewish majority will not agree to any Palestinian partner.
Critics of Oslo tend to forget that the gates of hell to terrorism were opened in February 1994 by a skullcap-wearing doctor in IDF uniform who murdered 29 Muslim worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs. 40 days later, with the end of the days of Muslim mourning, suicide bombing terror began in Hadera and Afula.
Oslo critics see no connection between Arik Sharon's provocation on the Temple Mount in September 2000 and the intifada that began the next day. They have a conception, and they are not interested in "interference."
The right's attempts to find Palestinian partners who would not demand a state for themselves were all unsuccessful, and even if they succeeded, they would very quickly lead to a situation in which the Palestinian majority would demand the realization of its just rights. The prominent Palestinians under our rule (such as Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi) were not willing to hold meaningful political negotiations with us, on the grounds that only the PLO led by Arafat is the legitimate cause for dialogue with Israel.
When we returned from the talks in London in 1987, with a paper agreed upon by King Hussein, stating that Jordan would assume responsibility for negotiations involving Palestinian opponents of terrorism, Shamir's Likud threw us out of all the steps, and the king left the West Bank to the Palestinians.
And most importantly, if Oslo was so disastrous, how come I have been calling for its abolition for two decades, and all right-wing governments, including the current one, cling to it as finding a great deal of booty?
The biggest obstacle to dividing the land is the fact of the large dispersal of settlements in the West Bank, and this problem can be solved by establishing a confederation (in the style of the beginning of the European Union) between Israel and the Palestinian state, which will allow any settler who so desires to remain in his home as an Israeli citizen and permanent Palestinian resident, but between the two states there will be a clear border, and the degree of its openness will depend on the security situation.
Only those who do not want an agreement, and do not understand its necessity, will continue to claim again and again that the disputes are insoluble and that there is no partner. Raising hands, in my view, is giving up Zionism.
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