The Labor Party has decided to show a film about Yitzhaq Rabin, but to cut out the picture of Rabin shaking the hand of Yasser Arafat at the signing ceremony of the Oslo agreement. Thus it buried his historic achievement.

A film about Rabin without Oslo is like a film about Albert Einstein without the theory of relativity or about Ben Gurion without the foundation of the State of Israel. It’s like murdering Rabin all over again.

There is no Rabin without Oslo, as there is no Oslo without Rabin. For 25 years he walked, step by step, towards this destination, which became his destiny. I can contribute a personal testimony to this.

Apart from some incidental encounters, I had had no contacts with Rabin until the June 1967 war. Then I sent several secret letters to the Chief-of-Staff Rabin, drawing his attention to a war crime committed by his soldiers: the wholesale killing of poor Palestinian refugees trying to cross the Jordan at night in order to get home. He acknowledged receipt of the letters, and., as far as I know, the practice stopped.

In the spring of 1969, after Prime Minister Levy Eshkol died in office, and in my role as the head of a Knesset faction, I officially proposed to the President of the State that Rabin be entrusted with the job of forming a new government. This would have necessitated a change of the law. Shortly thereafter, in June, I visited ambassador Rabin at his embassy in Washington, and that was the beginning of a dialogue about the Israeli-Palestinian problem which continued until his death.

I had come to the United States in order to propagate the idea of a Palestinian State in the occupied territories – an idea that I had already proposed to Eshkol in the middle of the 1967 war. After I had talked to several high-ranking American officials (i.a. Sisco, Saunders, Yost), Rabin invited me to the embassy. During our conversation he uttered a memorable sentence: “I don’t care at all where the borders will be, as long as they are open. Only a open border is a safe border.” (In Hebrew, open is patuah, safe is batuah.)

He adhered, however, to the so-called “Jordanian option”. During the conversation, and later in a summing-up letter I wrote him, I tried to convince him that only a border between the State of Israel and a State of Palestine would be unavoidably open. It would be open by necessity, by the economic, political and geographical reality, such as the connection between the West Bank and Gaza.

After Rabin’s return home the dialogue continued off and on – in the Prime Minister’s office, the Knesset, his residence, his private home and at social events where we would bump into each other and drink whiskey together. During 1975 and 1976 I came to his office several times in order to report, at the request of the Palestinians, about my secret contacts with PLO leaders. I brought him several proposals by Yasser Arafat (transmitted via Sa’id Hamami and myself) for a progression of certain political steps. Rabin repeated his belief in the Jordanian option and uttered another sentence that stuck in my memory: “I shall not take any step towards the Palestinians, because the first step will put us on a road that will inevitably lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.” To this he objected.

So how did he get to Oslo? He himself explained this to me in 1994, in a Shabbat conversation in his home. I had come to talk with him in preparation of the writing of an article in which I was going to name him Man of the Year. I had never seen him in such a relaxed mood. Lea was sitting with some guests in the living room, Rabin received me in his study. Eytan Haber joined us.

Rabin told me that he had adhered to the Jordanian option until the Intifada, when King Hussein announced that he was leaving the game and was giving up any claim to the Wrest Bank. Even earlier, Ariel Sharon had tried to set up a group of Palestinian Quislings (the “Village Leagues”), which aroused only ridicule among the Palestinians. When Rabin was appointed Minister of Defense, he invited local Palestinian leaders to meet him, individually and in groups. All told him: “As long as we are under occupation, we cannot conduct negotiations. Our political address is the PLO in Tunis.”

Afterwards the Prime Minister, Yitzhaq Shamir, was compelled to attend a peace conference in Madrid. He refused, of course, to sit down with a Palestinian delegation. Therefore a joint “Jordanian-Palestinian” delegation was formed - but it soon split into two. Thus the Israeli delegation found itself opposite a Palestinian delegation. Faisal Husseini, its leader, was a resident of Jerusalem, and therefore was not allowed into the room. He gave his orders to the delegation in the next one.

The situation became ridiculous. Every time the Israelis proposed something, the Palestinians said: “Let’s take a break. We must place a call to Tunis and get Arafat’s answer.” Rabin drew the logical conclusion: If it is Arafat who makes all the decisions in any case, it would be better to talk with him directly.”(In order to foreclose any doubt, I should mention that I have published all these facts in my book “My Friend, the Enemy” while Rabin was still alive. He never denied any of it.)

When he agreed to the Oslo principles, Rabin was not ready to make the big leap to reach peace directly. He was slow and cautious by nature and, in contradistinction to Begin, he was averse to dramatic moves. Instead of immediately paying the whole price for the whole peace, which would be a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, a e pre-1967 border the settlers turned back, he preferred to move forward slowly. He wanted to progress step by step, although he understood that this would lead eventually to the Palestinian state (as described).

Already in the 70s I had proposed that he meet Arafat secretly. At the time he adamantly refused. Even when he shook the hand of Arafat in Washington, it was obvious that he had to overcome misgivings. But during the two years left to him, the relations became much closer. The real Arafat, whom one sees in a face to face encounter, is very different from the one Israelis see in their imagination. Rabin, who was rather suspicious of personal relationships and not prone to bond easily, came to respect and trust the Palestinian leader, as Lea has testified.

Rabin underwent an even deeper change: he began to see the Palestinian side of the historic narrative and to absorb the fact that not all the justice is on one side. It was a slow and profound process. In his last Knesset speech he said: “We did not come to an empty country.” This is quite a heretical sentence coming from a convinced Zionist. Rabin’s assassin, and those who stood behind him, realized that they had no time to lose.

Those who pretend now to be his heirs are very far from being so. Ehud Barak has succeeded, within days, in destroying all that Rabin had built, patiently and thoroughly over the period of years. Barak did not continue where Rabin had left off, but returned us all to square one.

The similarity between Barak and Rabin is very superficial – both were born in this country, both were professional soldiers and both became Chiefs-of-Staff. But Rabin was much more than a general. He was an honest and wise person with a moral backbone. He was not arrogant. He did not believe that one can compel the Palestinians by force to accept things that threaten their national existence. He understood that if one wants to reach the “end of the conflict” with one stroke, one has to pay the whole price; and that, if one is not yet ready for this, it is better to proceed with interim agreements. He did not look down on the Palestinians and their leader

Ezer Weizman once said to me: “In order to make peace with the Arabs, one does not have to speak Arabic. On has to be a human being.” Rabin was no saint and no genius. But he was a human being.