government has “unambiguously demonstrated its commitment to
the peace process” since assuming leadership. “Israel is the last
party that has to prove its desire to make peace.” What’s been the
record of Rabin’s Labor government?
It’s perfectly true that Israel wants peace. So did Hitler.
Everybody wants peace. The question is, On what terms?
The Rabin government, exactly as was predicted, harshened the
repression in the territories. Just this afternoon I was speaking to a
woman who’s spent the last couple of years in Gaza doing human
rights work. She reported what everyone reports, and what
everybody with a brain knows—as soon as Rabin came, it got
tougher. He’s the iron-fist man—that’s his record.
Likud [the major irght-wing party in Israel] actually had a better
record in the territories than Labor did. Torture and collective
punishment stopped under Begin. There was one bad period when
Sharon was in charge, but under Begin it was generally better. When
the Labor party came back into the government in 1984, torture and
collective punishment started again, and later the intifada came.
In February 1989, Rabin told a group of Peace Now leaders that
the negotiations with the PLO didn’t mean anything—they were
going to give him time to crush the Palestinians by force. And they
will be crushed, he said, they will be broken.
It hasn’t happened.
It happened. The intifada was pretty much dead, and Rabin
awakened it again with his own violence. He has also continued
settlement in the occupied territories, exactly as everyone with
their eyes open predicted. Although there was a very highly
publicized settlement cutoff, it was clear right away that it was a
fraud. Foxman knows that. He reads the Israeli press, I’m sure.
What Rabin stopped was some of the more extreme and crazy
Sharon plans. Sharon was building houses all over the place, in
places where nobody was ever going to go, and the country couldn’t
finance it. So Rabin eased back to a more rational settlement
program. I think the current number is 11,000 new homes going up.
Labor tends to have a more rational policy than Likud—that’s one
of the reasons the US has always preferred Labor. They do pretty
much the same things as Likud, but more quietly, less brazenly.
They tend to be more modern in their orientation, better attuned to
the norms of Western hypocrisy. Also, they’re more realistic.
Instead of trying to make seven big areas of settlement, they’re
ann
(Ann)
#1