[Published 6 October 2020]
The 25th anniversary of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin’s assassination on 4 November 1995 has seen leading left-wing Democratic Party Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) cancelling her planned attendance at a memorial event organized by Americans for Peace Now on 20 October.
Ocasio-Cortez withdrew after journalist Alex Kane tweeted and AOC replied:
Rabin was indeed a liberal peacemaker and AOC’s decision is to be deplored.
Rabin – when Israel’s Defence Minister – stated on May 27, 1985:
“The Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the Jordan River there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees. One tiny State between Israel and Jordan will solve nothing. It will be a time bomb.”
One month before his assassination - Prime Minister Rabin sought approval for the 300 page “Israeli – Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” (Oslo Accords)" - telling the Knesset on 5 October 1995:
“We are striving for a permanent solution to the unending bloody conflict between us and the Palestinians and the Arab states.
“In the framework of the permanent solution, we aspire to reach, first and foremost, the State of Israel as a Jewish state, at least 80% of whose citizens will be, and are, Jews.
“At the same time, we also promise that the non-Jewish citizens of Israel — Muslim, Christian, Druze and others — will enjoy full personal, religious and civil rights, like those of any Israeli citizen. Judaism and racism are diametrically opposed.
“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.
And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:
First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev — as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.
The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.
Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the “Green Line,” prior to the Six Day War.
The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.”
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rejected this Rabin 1995 “entity-only solution”.
President Trump’s 2020 “two-state solution” promising the Palestinian Arabs a demilitarized state for the first time in recorded history in Gaza and possibly 70% of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) has also been rejected by the PLO.
Rabin’s 1985 “one-state solution”: “Peace with a Jordanian-Palestinian state under one government, one flag, one army” still remains the key to ending the 100-years old Arab-Jewish conflict.
Author’s note: The cartoon – commissioned exclusively for this article—is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators – whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades. His cartoons can be viewed at Drybonesblog
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