Stopped on road to peace
Ahron Bregman admires an insider view. Madeleine Kingsley muses on mythology Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman
Yale University Press, £16.99 Reviewed by Ahron Bregman
THIS YEAR, of course, marks the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day war in which the IDF, then led by Chief-ofStaff Yitzhak Rabin, scored a devastating military victory over the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. But most people, I believe, remember Yitzhak Rabin mainly for his bold efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and for the personal price he paid for his willingness to compromise with Israel’s enemies when, in 1995 at a Tel Aviv peace rally, Rabin was assassinated by a fanatical Orthodox Israeli.
Itamar Rabinovich’s book is the tale of a soldier-turned-statesman. Israeliborn, Yitzhak Rabin grew up in the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine under the British Mandate, and studied at an agricultural school.
Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, in which Rabin fought in and around Jerusalem, had a lasting impact on the then young conscript and, after the war, he decided to become a professional soldier, a decision that saw him rise to being Israel’s number-one soldier in 1964.
For the next three years, Rabin prepared the IDF for the moment of truth that came in June 1967. And the outcome of that swift conflict — a comprehensive Israeli victory — indicates that his preparation was first-class and that here was a born leader.
Moving on from Rabin’s early years, Rabinovich is especially interesting on the later diplomatic and political career: Rabin’s time as Israel’s ambas- Yitzhak Rabin: from Chief-of-Staff to Prime Minister in a life of singular accomplishment brought to a horrific end
sador to Washington from 1968 to 1973, his first tenure as prime minister from 1974 to 1977 and beyond. Rabinovich’s coverage of Rabin’s efforts to strike peace deals with Arab leaders is enthralling. This is a subject Rabinovich knows intimately, having been one of Rabin’s closest aides, serving as the Prime Minister’s ambassador in Washington (the US played a leading role in overseeing peace talks) and as chief negotiator in talks with Syrian representatives, aimed at sorting out the fate of the Golan Heights, land
which, under Rabin as Chief-of-Staff, Israel seized in 1967.
Rabin, as Rabinovich shows, concluded that Israel should seek to settle its disagreements with its enemies and was willing to make painful sacrifices for peace. “You don’t make peace with friends”, he famously declared. “You make it with your enemies”. To Rabin, the quest for peace was closely linked with the quest for security and he scrutinised any concession he was willing to make through the security lens.
Biographies written by those close
to their subject can sometimes involve special pleading but Rabinovich is commendably objective in his assessment of Rabin’s strengths and weaknesses.
His concise, well-written account of the life of an outstanding individual is in many ways also a biography of a nation. At the close, one can only wonder how the peace process might have developed had Yitzhak Rabin not been murdered.
Ahron Bregman is the author of ‘Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories’. Displaced