Rabin’s Inner Circle Discusses Post‑Gulf War Middle East Peace Efforts

Chapter Sixteen Rabin had inherited a peace process, put in motion by the Bush Administration after the Gulf War. But since both Prime Minister Shamir and our Arab enemies had reasons of procedure, politics or principle to resist the talks, merely getting them off the ground had required the same combination of deftness and determination President Bush had brought to assembling his wartime coalition and defeating Saddam. After a formal opening session in Madrid, the “bilateral tracks” — between Israel and negotiators from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinians — had quickly stalemated and stalled. Yitzhak came to office saying he was not interested in a peace process, which seemed to him a license for endless talk with no set endpoint, but in peacemaking. Since | had the good fortune to be part of the informal inner circle with which he discussed the potential opportunities, pitfalls and frustrations along the way, I know that he wasn’t assuming we could necessarily achieve a peace agreement with any of our neighbors. But after the twin shocks of the Lebanon War and the Scud missiles, he was concerned that Israel would retreat into a mix of political caution and military deterrence which he rightly believed was short-sighted. He believed we needed at least to try to seize a “window of opportunity” with those enemies who were at least open to compromise, if only because we were facing new threats from enemies for whom talk was not even an option. An increasingly assertive Iran, with nuclear ambitions, was one. But the intifada had also thrown up new Palestinian groups grounded not in nationalism, but fundamentalist Islam: Hamas in Gaza, which opposed Israel’s presence on any part of “Muslim Palestine,” and Islamic Jihad on the West Bank. And in Lebanon, we were confronting the Iranian-backed Shi’ ite militia fighters of Hizbollah. Each of us in the small group on whom Rabin relied for input on the peace talks brought something different to the mix. In addition to me, there were four other generals: Uri Saguy, the head of military intelligence; Gadi Zohar, in charge of civil administration for the West Bank and Gaza; my own former sayeret deputy, Danny Yatom, who was head of the central command; and Rabin’s military aide, Kuti Mor. Also included were longtime political and media aide Eitan Haber, and another trusted political adviser thousands of miles away: Itamar Rabinovich, our ambassador in Washington and Israel’s leading Syria expert. But I’m sure we weren’t chosen just for our insights. It was 253 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028101