TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Twenty years after Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down by a Jewish extremist opposed to his negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel is more divided than ever over Mideast peacemaking — and the people who opposed the assassinated premier with vitriol, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, now have a firm grip on power. [...] a massive campaign of suicide bombings by Islamic militants soon overwhelmed the political discourse. Rabin's government negotiated the first interim peace accord with the Palestinians in 1993, winning the prime minister — along with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres — the Nobel Peace Prize. While few justify the killing, they have no regrets that peace efforts were derailed and believe the country would have been damaged had he established an independent Palestinian state just miles from Israel's main cities. "If Rabin was not there we wouldn't have reached the Oslo agreement with the Israelis," said Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official who participated in the negotiations. In one famous incident, Netanyahu, then the opposition leader, addressed a protest in downtown Jerusalem where demonstrators held posters portraying Rabin in an Arab headscarf or Nazi uniform. Despite decades of trauma from war and conflict with the Palestinians, it was almost unthinkable at the time in Israel that a Jew could kill a sitting prime minister and revered war hero over a political dispute. Despite overwhelming evidence, including a video of the shooting, nationalist zealots have espoused a myriad of conspiracy theories aimed at shedding the collective blame their camp has shouldered. A recent target has been Israel's ceremonial president, Reuven Rivlin, a political hawk who opposed Rabin but has recently spoke in favor of coexistence and warned against racism and hatred. Bouts of Palestinian violence have pushed Israeli voters to the right and Netanyahu's hard-line government appears content with "managing the conflict."
Comment on 20 years later, little left of Yitzhak Rabin's peace legacy
By ARON HELLER, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle: World
Fri, 10/30/2015 - 7:30am
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