Israeli legal expert recalls key breakthrough for peace

Forty years ago this month, Elyakim Rubinstein was a 30-year-old aide to iconic Israeli general Moshe Dayan, the young country’s defense minister, when the shocking news came that Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt, Israel’s longtime sworn enemy, had made a dramatic announcement. Separating himself from the Arab world’s adamant refusal to acknowledge Israel’s existence, and after decades in which Egypt had maintained a state of war with the Jewish state, Sadat offered to travel to Israel to plead for a new era of peace.

“All hell broke loose,” recalls Rubinstein, who was among the stunned Israelis on the tarmac at the Tel Aviv airport to witness the Egyptian leader’s surreal arrival. “It was like the wings of history were waving.”

Rubinstein would go on to a storied place in modern Middle East history. One of the principal negotiators of the 1978 Camp David accord that led to a historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, he was also his country’s chief architect in its peace deal with Jordan. The mild-mannered lawyer later served as Israel’s attorney general from 1997 to 2004, and thereafter as a justice on its Supreme Court before stepping down this summer.

In town last week to talk with Boston area law students, lawyers and judges about dry matters of jurisprudence, Rubinstein stopped for coffee to ruminate on the impact of that extraordinary overture by Anwar Sadat 40 Novembers ago — an overture that would lead to his assassination by Islamic fundamentalists just four years later.

“It broke the psychological barrier,” Rubinstein remembers, “making the idea of peace with Israel legitimate.”

The peace that Rubinstein helped construct with Egypt and Jordan has managed to hold, despite some tensions along the way. Israel’s working relationships with numerous Arab countries, unacknowledged on both sides, are an open secret, the product of pragmatism rather than warmth.

“It’s because of (Arab) interests,” he observes, referring to concerns shared by Arab states and Israel about the regional threats posed by radical Islam in general and growing Iranian power in particular.

A lifetime of public service in a region rife not only with conflict but barbarity has not dimmed Rubinstein’s optimism, which surfaces frequently during our talk.

“The flame of peace should be kept alive,” he says simply, as he contemplates the next phase of service to his country.