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Seeds of peace

David Lloyd-George said that one cannot cross an abyss in two jumps. He spoke about his efforts to make peace with the Irish, but the same could be said about the basic fault of the Oslo agreement. Yitzhak Rabin tried to cross the abyss in many small jumps. That was his mistake.

For many years I had a running dialogue with him about the Palestinian question. Since 1969, I had tried to convince him that the "Jordanian Option" did not exist, that we have to make peace with the Palestinian people, represented by the PLO and Yasser Arafat.

Once, in 1976, when I brought him a Palestinian offer for an exchange of some minor gestures, he told me: "I shall not take the smallest step towards a settlement with the Palestinians, because the first step will inevitably lead to a Palestinian state, which I don't want." Seventeen years later, Rabin, a very logical person, realized that there was no other alternative but to deal with the Palestinians. On my 70th birthday, September 10, 1993, he exchanged letters of mutual recognition with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a very courageous step for an old Arab-fighter like him.

However, Rabin's courage did not suffice for the next logical step: spelling out that the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies in the establishment of the State of Palestine next to the State of Israel.

That was the big jump needed to cross the abyss.

The birth defect of the Oslo agreement was exactly this: it did not spell out what the end result of the "peace process" was going to be. It set up "interim" phases, but the final aim was left open.

The Palestinians were quite clear about their aim, which has not changed to this very day - a Palestinian state in all the occupied territories, with the Green Line as the border and Jerusalem as a shared capital. By this the Palestinians gave up in Oslo their claim to 78 percent of what was Palestine before 1948. But the Israeli aim was left open. This was an invitation for disaster. Lacking a shared vision, every single "interim" step led to disagreement and confrontation.

If you want to go from Tel Aviv to Haifa, you can stop on the way in Hadera or Atlit. But if you want to go to Beersheba, your "interim" stations are going to be quite different. The "final status" negotiation never got off the ground.

All this was quite clear right from the beginning. But I supported the Oslo agreement for a simple reason: I believed that it would generate a peace dynamic that would overcome its basic faults. But the faults proved too strong. Rabin was basically a very cautious person, he moved slowly, relying only on the advice of his fellow army officers who were instinctively reluctant to cede anything.

His hesitations were fateful for the historic agreement and for himself. They allowed all the negative forces to regroup and mount a counter-attack. Not being ready for the one big jump, Rabin fell into the very abyss he was trying to cross.

In spite of everything, Oslo was a big step forward. It brought with it the mutual recognition of Israel and Palestine; it created the embryo of a Palestinian state; it paved the way for the present worldwide consensus around the aim of "two states for two peoples."

While the present looks dark and hopeless, as usual, the seeds of peace have been sown. Much suffering, blood and tears still lie ahead, but the historic handshake of Rabin and Arafat on September 13, 1993, will be seen by generations to come as the symbolic beginning of a new era.

The writer is founder of Gush Shalom.