A HOUSE DIVIDED: ISRAELI POLITICS NOVEMBER 6, 1995 TRANSCRIPT

JIM LEHRER: We go first to a look at the politics of Israel, the politics that produced both the victim and his assassin. Colette Avital is the Israeli Consul General in New York. Abraham Ben-Zvi is a professor at Tel Aviv University, a visiting professor here at Georgetown University. Ian Lustick is a professor of social sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, author of a book about right wing Israeli groups titled For the Lord and the Land. Yaacov Achimeir is the Washington correspondent for Israeli Television. Ms. Avital, should the assassination be seen only as the act of a lone gunman, or also as a manifestation of deep political divisions within Israel?

COLETTE AVITAL, Consul General, Israel: I think the act and the bullet which killed Yitzhak Rabin was possible because there was a climate of violence. Yaacov Achimeir, who is in your Washington studio, knows that very well. We discussed it before. Strangely enough, we discussed it just last week when he told me he had in his hands material from a press conference and from some interviews even taken here in the United States. I'm not sure that all those who people threatened Yitzhak Rabin, or treated him as a traitor and threatened him would have actually carried out the act. But I believe very firmly and very strongly that when such rhetoric happens, when you create a climate around it, when day in, day out, you call a prime minister "traitor," you depict him as an SS Nazi, that is enough for a mad man, or somebody who thinks that God has spoken to him, to prepare the bullet.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree that the climate was created?

YAACOV ACHIMEIR, Israeli Television: I don't know whether the climate was created, but I wouldn't like to blame groups within the Israeli society for this horrible murder. But I would say that we are not talking here about very simple or superficial issues within Israel. We are talking about territories. We are talking about lands which are very dear to major segments, large or smaller segments, within the Israeli society. And Israel is about to reach a very historic decision to divide the land between the Jordan River and the sea. But this, of course, we do not condone such a murder, and--

JIM LEHRER: But you agree with Ms. Avital that the climate, though, from those who feel that way, that feel that Yitzhak Rabin should ont be doing this, should not be giving this land back, created a climate that helped foster this, this assassination?

MR. ACHIMEIR: I would agree that--I would say that the political environment in Israel, the nature of the decisions that Israel has to reach, to agree upon, incited this man, this murderer, to do what he did. But I wouldn't say that political groups within the Israeli parliament, within the Israeli body politics, created this climate.

JIM LEHRER: Prof. Lustick, what's your view of this?

IAN LUSTICK, University of Pennsylvania: (Philadelphia) My view is that, in fact, deeper political analysis shows that, in fact, the creation of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, in the massive way that they were put there by the Begin and Shamir government in heavily Arab areas were, as a matter of fact, to build in the West Bank and Gaza into Israeli society so that should a future government try to withdraw, this is the kind of explosion that would occur to prevent it from happening. In other words, it was a way to annex the territories, not legally, but to make it so terrifying for Israelis to withdraw that they wouldn't try. And what we have seen in the past is this is not the first kind of action of this sort. There have been many death threats. Every time it seemed that there might be a Labor Party government willing to make peace, as for example, in 1990, Shimon Peres almost formed a government--he and his allies received many death threats at that time. We also saw after the Camp David Accords, when the fundamentalist settlers felt that they might be losing their grip on the situation, that's when they formed the Jewish Underground to attack Arab leaders, to blow up the Temple Mount--excuse me, the Muslim shrines and the Temple Mount to try to destroy the peace process. Baruch Goldstein's massacre of worshippers in Hevrone, a settler from Hevrone, that was done in response to Oslo II, because of the progress that seemed to be made toward peace. Here we have Oslo--excuse me Oslo I--here we have Oslo II, another extremist, bred within the hot houses that these settlements have become for fanatic extremism, in a climate, as Colette Avital rightly said, that was created originally by the Likud government.

JIM LEHRER: So Prof. Ben-Zvi, would you agree that something, if not the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, something like this was growing increasingly inevitable?

ABRAHAM BEN-ZVI, Tel Aviv University: I think one should distinguish between long-term processes and the immediate concretization in the form of the Oslo agreement. Namely, I think we should start with the Six Day War, the aftermath of the war. The war was justified, but the war brought to the fore biblical attachment, sentiment, some primordial feelings, and legacies. And now all of a sudden, I think that the fury starts to manifest itself, and the Oslo actually implies an immediate redeployment for the first time from major sectors of the West Bank, including the major centers of population, so what was an amorphous initially, generally loose, becomes all of a sudden an immediate threat for those radicals and intransigent, recalcitrant groups which reacted in a very violent way. So once it becomes so concrete and immediate, I think the threat becomes so acute and immediate.

JIM LEHRER: And they find a biblical reason for not giving this land back, correct?

PROF. BEN-ZVI: Of course. And I think it was beyond the extreme groups. There was a major transformation of a central party, the National Religious Party, which was initially before the Six Day War a convenient partner of Labor, because it was indifferent, totally indifferent to security issues. After the war, all of a sudden, the biblical elements, the ancient cohesion, the element attachment, we can transform the party, actually the label of the partner, and it was becoming increasingly affiliated with the right, with the right wing movement. And somehow, I think, it culminated in the violent explosion of Saturday, which I think left Israel, ended an era. Israel lost its innocence.

JIM LEHRER: Lost its what?

PROF. BEN-ZVI: Innocence.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Ms. Avital, that Israel lost its innocence?

MS. AVITAL: Very much so. Very much so.

JIM LEHRER: And what does that mean? What does that mean, losing its innocence?

MS. AVITAL: Let me just get back for one second.

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

MS. AVITAL: I think what I meant to say--and I'm answering Yaacov Achimeir--is not--I was not accusing groups inside of parliament. I was really talking about protest groups outside of the parliament, groups like "This is Our Land," all these groups that have been very active lately. Now, I think Mr. Achimeir and others have put their finger on something which is very important. There are basically two schools of thought in our society; one which, call it biblical or otherwise, feel that there is the sanctity of the land that goes above and beyond everything else, and that we should not relinquish the land and we have to sacrifice for the land. And they're wrong, the self-appointed messiahs. And there is another part of the population which even though very much attached to the land and even though having settled and seen trees grow and having put their houses there still believe in the sanctity of the human being. And I think what I'm trying to say is that those that have created a climate basically went further beyond the line and felt that for the sanctity of the land, for giving up one inch of territory, one has to kill. And this is where this has become so sharp in a way of the divide within the Israeli society.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that?

MR. ACHIMEIR: Yes, I can agree with that. I think the climate was created by the '67 War. And also, I would like to--

JIM LEHRER: Do you believe--you agree that the encouragement was there and that the division remains, or what happens now, as a result of this assassination?

MR. ACHIMEIR: First of all, the division remains, and the division is deepening in the Israeli society.

JIM LEHRER: What does this--the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin-- do to the division?

MR. ACHIMEIR: I think it deepens the division between the two segments of the Israeli society. And I think that this is a very major challenge before Mr. Peres, who will be the next prime minister of Israel-- he's presently the acting prime minister of Israel--to be or to solidify his figure as a father figure of the nation. The nation is divided. Maybe the nation is on the verge of a civil war; I don't know. But this was the first time--and God forbid, maybe the last time--that a leader of Israel was assassinated.

JIM LEHRER: Prof. Lustick, do you see based on your study of these--particularly of the right wing groups--that there's any room for compromise? Is it the kind of thing that it's going to have to be resolved through a--maybe not an out and out civil war but something similar to that?

PROF. LUSTICK: Well, God forbid we should be talking about a civil war, but there certainly are die- hard elements for whom the idea of compromise is impossible. In some political situations, you cannot move forward on the basis of compromise. I think that there is a basis in Israel for wide support of the peace process as people will be realizing after this assassination, that it's not so much a question of how many--how many acres are going to go back to the Palestinians and under what time frame, but, rather, whether Israel can remain a stable, prosperous, dynamic country, a democracy, and continue to rule these territories. When people choose and they have to choose between a stable life and these territories, they will--the government will find a wide basis of consensus. And then those true die-hards, the fanatic opposition, can be isolated, will be isolated, and can be dealt with effectively by the Israeli government and security services. And I think ultimately there will be a showdown of that sort. So I do not believe it will result in a full-scale civil war.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think there has to be a showdown, Prof. Ben-Zvi?

PROF. BEN-ZVI: Well, I would distinguish between the immediate, the short-term and the long-term future. In the short run, I think some of the tension is bound to recede into the background. It's not going to wither away. It's not going to disappear, but it's going to recede, to subside, and all parties will do their utmost to mitigate such circumstances. But in the long run--

JIM LEHRER: Out of morning for Rabin.

PROF. BEN-ZVI: Right. But also--but in May '96, negotiations about the permanent status of the territories are bound to start, to begin, and I think tension will be compounded, will be aggravated, because we are going to deal with the thorniest issues of the conflict, such as Jerusalem, permanent boundaries, further polarization. And I entirely agree with Yaacov Achimeir, the growing polarization in Israeli public opinion is, is bound to become exacerbated--exacerbated because you are not dealing with a Nablus or with a Hebron, you are going to deal with the heart of the issue, Jerusalem.

JIM LEHRER: Ms. Avital, let me ask you--do you agree with Prof. Lustick that eventually it's going to come down to a choice between the territories and stability of--the stability of Israel?

MS. AVITAL: I believe so, but then I think that something has to happen on the way. I think that what we're seeing today is a kind of a national catharsis. I believe that somewhere there is--at least now for a while--a meeting of the minds, if I may say so, between the people in government and between the opposition when the people in opposition and certainly the Likud leaders, who have shown fantastic restraint and much responsibility have understood where that kind of extreme--extremist can lead. And I believe that somewhere--and I hope that this is not wishful thinking--I believe in it very strongly--is there could be, when the period of mourning is over, some kind of a national consensus formed that come what may those groups have to be isolated and come what may, and even though everybody's calling voices and running after additional voices in order to win the elections, and that is the name of the game in the next year, we have to reach some kind of a consensus in order to isolate as much as possible the fringe elements who in the long run will also want to dictate a settlement to the Likud government should the Likud government come to power.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Achimeir, you were shaking your head as she was speaking.

MR. ACHIMEIR: Yes, because recently, for instance in the 80's, Israel found a very nice political solution for its problem. Israel created the National Unity Government, and there were several National Unity Governments in times of emergency and the more quiet times in the history of Israel. And this was, you know, I would say a superficial solution, political solution. Now, it's impossible. I think that it's impossible to reach a consensus over these very basic biblical, may I say, issues, because we are on the verge of elections in November 1966 [1996].

JIM LEHRER: So there's momentum toward consensus?

MR. ACHIMEIR: Yes. And I don't think that Mr. Peres, the next prime minister, or the acting prime minister of Israel, will call now for the creation of a National Unity Government, because he wouldn't like to legitimize, so to speak, Mr. Netanyahu as a responsible minister within his government. So I don't think--

JIM LEHRER: The leader of the Likud Party.

MR. ACHIMEIR: The leader of the Likud Party. So I don't think that it is possible now, you know, to bridge the gaps, because we are in election. Already, we started the year of elections in Israel. And when there are elections in Israel, like in United States, tension is higher.

JIM LEHRER: In all democracies.

MR. ACHIMEIR: In all democracies, yes.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, Ms. Avitar, gentlemen, thank you all very much.

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