Soccer Dad

Savir's wishful thinking

Celebrating Oslo, Uri Savir made an indefensible statement:

"I am convinced that had [then-prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin not been assassinated and if Bibi [Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu] had not won the [1996] elections, we would already be at peace," Savir said.

Due to politics, people have a poor memory of exactly what happened in 1995 and 1996. Savir should know better, but he's looking at history through his rose colored glasses.

In October 1995, Yitzchal Rabin barely was able to get Oslo II passed. He did it by luring members of Tzomet to join his coalition as a new faction just to get a bare majority. By October 1995, Oslo was extremely unpopular due to the increased terror that resulted from it. Yet Rabin intent on continuing the peace process pulled a highly controversial maneuver to keep it going.

Before Rabin was assassinated, Binyamin Netanyahu had passed him in popularity polls. Believe it or not, without the assassination of Rabin, Netanyahu likely would have become Prime Minister earlier than he did, and by a wider margin.

But the idea that the killing of Rabin hurt the peace process (from the Israeli side) is nonsense. After Rabin was killed, Shimon Peres quickly withdrew from Ramallah, Tulkarem, Jenin, Beit Lehem, and Kalkilye speeding up the peace process beyond what Rabin was willing to do.

Of course the reduction of the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria meant a greater reliance on the Palestinian Authority, which failed to provide the security it was obligated to under Oslo. That led to the terror attacks of Februrary and March 1996, which is the factor that allowed Netanyahu to win the election in June over Shimon Peres.

Rather than hurting the peace process, Netanyahu probably helped it. First of all, his administration boasted in late 1998 that more Palestinians were employed in Israel than any time since 1992. Also terror deaths during Netanyahu's term as PM, were down significantly. When Israelis voted for Barak over Netanyahu in 1999, they likely didn't consider terrorism a major problem. Netanyahu's term in office made it appear safe for Israel to return to the peace process.

So when Israel voted for Netanyahu it was a reaction that the peace process had brought terror, not peace. It was a reasonable conclusion since there was no Israeli government that had been more conciliatory towards the Palestinians (at that time) than Shimon Peres's and the retreats of the Peres government led to more terror not less.

So Savir can claim that the fault of the failure of the peace process on events in Israel. But Israelis persisted in supporting the peace process, when the terror subsided. It was the actions (or inaction) of Yasser Arafat and the PA that scuttled the peace process.

Savir's projected his wishful thinking onto what actually happened. He does not remember correctly.

(h/t Alouette)