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Remembering Rabin's vision

Late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was a true leader, a pragmatic and coherent politician who could explain to the public why separating from the Palestinians was in the interests of Zionism, unlike Israel's current party leaders.
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It was June 1992, one week before the elections for the 13th Knesset. A televised debate was coming to a close when moderator Nissim Mishal let Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir ask his rival one final question. At that moment, it was made perfectly clear to the public that they were being asked to choose between two distinct paths: one advocated by the right, and another advocated by the left. Now, 23 years later, those two paths are just as relevant. Shamir, then the 77-year-old prime minister and leader of the Likud, asked Labor Party Chairman Yitzhak Rabin, “Do you really want a Palestinian state within the Land of Israel? With whom do you want to reach a territorial compromise? With whom?”

It was the final confusing days of the first intifada, and the question was meant to trip Rabin up, but the leader of the opposition remained unfazed. He actually seemed eager to answer with a clear position. He said, as succinctly as he could, “I oppose a Palestinian state between us and the Jordan River. In the same way, I don’t want 1.7 million Palestinians to become citizens of the State of Israel. That is why I support autonomy and in 1977, I voted to approve it in the Knesset. Mr. Shamir abstained. … I’m for starting with that. New opportunities will open up before us. I have three principles: No to 2 million Palestinian citizens, no to a Palestinian state and no to a withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries; Jerusalem and the conflict borderlines should stay ours.”

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