BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
Reeling from the assassination of Israeli prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin by an ultrarightist Jew, the Labor Party
administration now headed by Shimon Peres is striving to
stabilize the political situation by proceeding with the
recent accords on Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank.
It was the first time an Israeli leader was killed since
the state of Israel was established in 1948.
Rabin, who in 1967 led Israel's armed forces to seize the West Bank and other territories from neighboring counties, and who played a central role in the Israeli regime for three decades, was killed November 4 at a large political rally in Tel Aviv. Police arrested Yigal Amir, a rightist opponent of the accords signed between the Rabin government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
In response to Rabin's assassination, "all the main parties in Israel are working hard to create an atmosphere of `national unity,' " reported Michel Warschawsky, director of the Alternative Information Center, in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.
The big-business press in Israel and internationally has lavished praise on the late prime minister, with such labels as "Shepherd of Peace" and "Determined Peacemaker." Close to 2,500 capitalist politicians from around the world flocked to his funeral, from German chancellor Helmut Kohl to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
PLO chairperson Yasir Arafat condemned the killing and expressed his condolences, but did not attend the funeral under pressure from Israeli officials.
U.S. president Bill Clinton flew in accompanied by cabinet members, former presidents and secretaries of state, and three dozen members of Congress. At the funeral Clinton exalted Rabin as "a warrior for his nation's freedom and now a martyr for his nation's peace."
Despite these orations, however, the Israeli leader's obituaries leave no ambiguity about his record. Rabin himself, in his 1979 memoirs, acknowledged his role in driving 50,000 Palestinians out of their homes at gunpoint during the Zionist army's 1948 war of conquest. Later, as Israel's army chief of staff, he led the preemptive Six-Day War in 1967 against Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, which seized the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and much of the Sinai Peninsula.
When the Palestinian intifada (uprising) broke out on the occupied territories in 1987, then defense minister Rabin bragged about his "iron fist" policy, which included his order that Israeli soldiers break the legs and arms of youthful protesters.
After Israel's capitalist rulers finally recognized they could not suppress the intifada, Rabin, who became prime minister in 1992, was forced to negotiate with the PLO, leading to the 1993 accords, which called for giving Palestinians some control in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Even as a newly anointed "peacemaker," Rabin sparked outrage when his regime officially authorized its cops to torture Palestinian and other detainees. Last year, following a bombing in Tel Aviv by the opposition Palestinian group Hamas, Rabin proclaimed, "We need a separation between [Israelis] and Palestinians, not just for days but as a way of life."
Rabin himself was not one to disavow assassinations. After Fathi Shiqaqi, a leader of the Islamic Holy War was gunned down in Malta October 26, in a killing widely believed to have been the work of Tel Aviv's secret police, Rabin declared he "would not feel sorry" about the murder of such political enemies.
Reaction of Palestinians
Not surprisingly, there was little mourning for the
Israeli leader among Palestinians. Emad al-Ghoul, a worker
at the Walid Seidam garment shop in Gaza, expressed a
typical reaction. "Everybody in this shop has had one or
more tragedies in their families because of Rabin and his
generals," he told the New York Times. "We saw our sons,
fathers, cousins or other relatives jailed, shot, beaten or
rendered unemployed by Israel."
A Hebron resident, noting that the Israeli government has encouraged Jewish settlers - rightists who are virulently opposed to the self-rule accords - to take over Palestinian land in the West Bank, said of Rabin, "He was killed by his own kind.... He planted the settlers here, and they are the ones who have done this."
The confessed assassin, a 25-year-old law student, is reportedly a member of a small ultrarightist group, Eyal, which opposes the accords. Eyal leader Avishay Raviv praised the assassination over the radio. On November 8, Israeli police arrested Raviv on charges of involvement in Rabin's murder. In recent weeks rightists have been holding a series of increasingly strident protests against the agreements.
The right-wing settlers represent part of a growing polarization among Israeli Jews. The capitalist government's inability to crush the Palestinian struggle, combined with a serious economic crisis hitting workers especially hard, has also led large numbers of Jews to favor peace negotiations with the PLO.
The rally where Rabin spoke before his assassination had been called by a coalition of liberal organizations and left-wing parties to support the government's policies and oppose the rightists' street protests.
Among Jewish workers, Warschawsky reported, "many were stunned by the assassination. It shattered some of their illusions and hopes" in the prospect of stability and peace in Israel.
Meanwhile, the government, under acting prime minister Peres, the former foreign minister, "is attempting to rally people around the false idea of `national unity' and that we are all supposedly `one family,' " Warschawsky added. Because of the social crisis, he said, "I think this can only be successful for a brief time."
At the same time, government officials are using the assassination to push for legislation to clamp down on those accused of "incitation to violence." While these proposals are being justified as a way to combat the right- wing violence, some capitalist politicians are advocating that such measures be applied against "left-wing extremists" as well.
Negotiations resume
After a three-day suspension, Tel Aviv resumed talks
with the PLO on the implementation of the September
accords. This agreement was the second stage of the
"Declaration of Principles" signed by Arafat and Rabin in
1993. The first stage of this process transferred the
domestic affairs of Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho
to a Palestinian authority set up by the PLO.
The September 1995 pact will extend Palestinian control to most of the West Bank. Israeli troops are to withdraw by year's end from all populated areas except Hebron, where 450 settlers have set up camp in the midst of 100,000 Palestinians. In Hebron the accord stipulates that 40 percent of the city be run by Israeli authorities. An 82- member Palestinian Council is to be elected January 20, with separate elections for an executive head of the authority, which Arafat is assured of winning.
For several days after the assassination, however, Israeli authorities clamped down on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, closing off their entry to Israel, where thousands work. "Whenever something goes wrong in Israel, we are always the first to pay for it," commented Saeb Erakat, the Palestinian Authority's minister for local affairs.