Rabin’s Death Leaves Ominous Gap

I desperately want to write a column that says that despite the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, the peace process between Israel and the Arabs will survive. I am not sure.

The reason is that this is a case where the death of one man really can make an enormous difference. It was only Yitzhak Rabin, among contemporary Israeli leaders, who had the credibility and courage to sell the peace treaty with Yasser Arafat to the Israeli public.

Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, deserves enormous credit for having the initial vision to see the possibility for a breakthrough between Israel and the Palestinians, and to push Rabin in that direction. But it was Rabin who, once convinced that Arafat was ready to deal, persuaded Israelis that they could trade land for peace with their mortal enemy. They would not have bought the deal from anyone else.

There are two reasons. One is that Rabin was the Israeli everyman. He was deeply in touch with the soul of the great Israeli silent majority. His gruff, no-nonsense approach to life epitomized the personality of the native-born Israeli Sabra. Rabin did not take any flak from anyone. And like the Israeli silent majority, Rabin always made clear that he was making peace with the Palestinians, not because he liked them, but because he believed it was the best way to guarantee a secure and prosperous Israel, because he believed Israelis would never be able to feel at home unless the Palestinians did as well.

The second reason for Rabin’s unique credibility was his war record. He commanded the Israeli troops that captured Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Sinai and the West Bank in 1967, and therefore he alone had the standing to give them back in peace.

Having just spent two weeks traveling through the Middle East, I am convinced that the peace process Rabin so boldly helped to set in motion is very real - but now we are going to find out just how real. One thing I learned a long time ago is that sometimes the news is in the noise and sometimes the news is in the silence, and the real story in the Middle East since Sept. 13, 1993, when Rabin and Arafat shook hands at the White House, has been the silence with which the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians accepted this peace and wanted to see it go forward.

The people who heard that silence most loudly, the people who were driven crazy by that silence, were the extremes in both communities. The Jewish and Muslim fanatics. They heard the silence within their communities and decided they had to do something about it - to make sure this peace process did not go forward. They knew that to break through the silence they had to engage in something more than garden-variety terrorism. They had to engage in acts of violence so unspeakable they might be able to create a tit-for-tat situation that would unravel the new relationship between Israelis and Arabs.

For two years, the Jewish and Muslim lunatics tried their best - with suicide bombs and killings in a mosque - but they could not stop the process. The silent majorities were too strong. So now they have gone to a new extreme. Instead of killing each other, and hoping that would explode the peace, they have begun to kill their own.

I saw Rabin 10 days ago. We spent an hour together sitting in his Tel Aviv office schmoozing about the peace process. In his low-key manner he thanked me for a column I had written in defense of what he was doing. As always, he smoked like a chimney. He looked thin and worn down. But the one thing that struck me was the contrast between his physical appearance and the words he spoke, which were steely, brimming with vigor and more committed than ever to going forward with the Palestinians.

When a friend asked me later how I found Rabin, I said that he struck me as “a man on a mission.” He knew just where he was going, and he was ready to take any heat to get there, and he did not care whom he offended along the way, because he was sure in his soul that what he was doing was best for Israel and the Jewish people. I know he was right, and I pray that the Israeli silent majority he represented so well will find a way to complete his courageous mission.

Goodbye, Yitzhak. I will forever be proud to tell my children and my children’s children that we were friends.