Former Israeli Prime Minister Reflects on Security Fence Decision and Early 2000s Conflict

/ BARAK / 106 there’s no doubt you’ ll decide to build this fence. But to your dying day, you won’t be able to look yourself in the mirror and explain why you waited for another 630 Israelis to die first.” He did eventually start building it, but only in the wake of an act of terrorism which, even by the standards of this new and still-escalating intifada, was truly obscene. In March 2002, suicide bombers murdered 30 people, mostly elderly, as they were celebrating the annual Passover Seder in a hotel dining room in Netanya. Arik hit back two days later with Israel’s largest military operation on the West Bank since 1967. Israeli forces retook major Palestinian towns, placed Arafat under de facto siege in his headquarters in Ramallah and imposed curfews and closures. In June, the government formally approved the security fence. Still, another year would pass before the major part of the barrier was in place, by which time some 500 Israelis had been murdered in the terror attacks. Only then did the number of casualties begin to fall. I tried to steer clear of public criticism of Arik’s government. One of the lessons I’d learned as Prime Minister was how easy it was to second-guess from the outside. No Prime Minister can act exactly as he might plan or want to. The most you can do is make sure you understand and analyze the issues and follow your instincts, experience and conscience to come as near as possible to doing what you believe is right. You will inevitably make mistakes and misjudgements. I certainly did. At least some of the criticism I received was deserved. I was at times too inflexible. I tended to limit my focus to a small group of trusted aides and advisors. I was less good at schmoozing with — or, perhaps more importantly, delegating to — others in the government or the party. I suspect it’s no coincidence that the man who brought me into government in the first place was often criticized for the same things. By character, instinct and experience, Rabin, too, remained less a politician than a military man. Yet towards the end of his second period as Prime Minister, he did get better at delegating to people around him, and creating an atmosphere that encouraged teamwork, even when he knew he could not accept or act on everything they might suggest. During my term as Prime Minister, I was much less good at that. But another thing Yitzhak and I shared was a determination to set ourselves specific goals and do everything we could to achieve them. I promised to get the army out of Lebanon. With the Palestinians, I arrived in office convinced that the process begun in Oslo was both a huge opportunity and a potential dead-end. I was 392 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028240