Remembering Rabin’s 1985 legacy can end Arab-Jewish conflict

 [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

Clinton Silent On Honouring Bush-Congress Commitments To Israel

[Published 20 March 2016]


Marco Rubio’s withdrawal from the Presidential race this week will not relieve Hillary Clinton from affirming or disavowing the following pledge made by Rubio during his failed campaign:

“I will revive the common-sense understandings reached in the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter and build on them to help ensure Israel has defensible borders,”

The terms of Bush’s letter - dated 14 April 2004 - were overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Representatives 407-9 on 23 June 2004 and the Senate 95-3 on 24 June 2004.

The letter backed Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza and promised to support Israel’s following positions in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority over the previous 11 years:

1. Israel would not cede its claims to all of the territory captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War

2. Millions of Palestinian Arabs would not be resettled in Israel and

3. Israel must be recognised as the state of the Jewish people.

Israel’s insistence on these conditions had been major stumbling blocks in the PLO rejecting Israel’s offer to withdraw from more than 90% of the West Bank during negotiations brokered by President Bill Clinton in 2000/2001.

The Bush Congress-endorsed letter had put America squarely in Israel’s corner.

Elliott Abrams — Middle East Affairs point-man at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009 — had no qualms about the significance of the Bush letter — when stating in July 2009:

“Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation — the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step”.

President Obama however sought to change the goal posts laid down in the Bush letter with this statement on 19 May 2011:

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

Glenn Kessler pointed out at the time:

“Indeed, Israelis and Palestinians have held several intensive negotiations that involved swapping lands along the Arab-Israeli dividing line that existed before the 1967 war - technically known as the Green Line, or the boundaries established by the 1949 Armistice agreements. (Click here for a visual description of the swaps discussed between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008.)

So, in many ways, it is not news that the eventual borders of a Palestinian state would be based on land swaps from the 1967 dividing line. But it makes a difference when the president of the United States says it, particularly in a carefully staged speech at the State Department. This then is not an off-the-cuff remark, but a carefully considered statement of U.S. policy.”

Given the chaos in Syria since Obama’s statement, the birth of Islamic State in 2014 and the continuing unstable political and security situations in Gaza and the West Bank— mutually agreed land swaps as a concept have become just another missed opportunity whose time has expired.

Michael Oren—Israel’s Ambassador to Washington between 2009 and 2013 was moved to make the following call in January 2015:

".. it’s time to revive the Bush-Sharon letter and act according to it.”

Will Clinton so act — if elected America’s 17th Democratic President — to honour a former Republican President’s commitments to one of America’s longstanding allies that go far beyond personal partisan politics?

Her answer is eagerly awaited.