In the early twentieth century, as World War I was raging, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson put forth a peace settlement proposal for the world, which became known as Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Upon hearing of the list, the disbelieving French prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, reportedly responded, “Even God Almighty only has ten.” I have spent most of the better part of my life in pursuit of peace, and in doing so have learned what Clemenceau didn’t fully appreciate in that moment. Making peace is not a simple endeavor. It is a constant struggle. But its complexity should not overshadow its purpose.
Israel is a tiny island that, for most of its short existence, was surrounded by a sea of enemies. The wars we fought were forced upon us. In light of what our enemies hoped (and still hope) for, on the whole we have been triumphant, but we have yet to win the victory to which we have aspired: release from the need to win victories. Indeed, while we have proved that aggressors do not necessarily emerge as victors, we have also learned that victors do not necessarily win peace—that our work is not yet complete.
As a child I asked my grandfather which verse one should carry in one’s heart. He recited to me the thirty-fourth chapter of the book of Psalms: “Whoever of you love life and desire to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from telling lies. Seek peace and pursue it.” And so I have, and so we must. I dedicated my life, first and foremost, to making sure Israel was secure: to protect her from the threat of destruction by working to build the greatest defense force in the world, and to deter our foes from believing she could ever be destroyed. When Israel was weak, I worked to make her fierce. But once she was strong, I gave my life’s efforts to peace. Peace is, after all, our heart’s truest desire, yet its pursuit must be based not just on political and economic concerns, but on moral and historical imperatives. As Ben-Gurion so often said, the moral high ground is also the basis of power.
The Jewish people have lived by the guiding principle of tikkun olam, the ambition to improve the whole world, not just ourselves. We lived in exile for two thousand years, without land, without independence, held together not by borders, but by this simple set of values that have echoed through history—in Hebrew, in Yiddish, in Ladino—in every language of every country into which the Jewish people dispersed. It is the basis of our identity. And it is from this moral code that we know, fundamentally, that Israel was not born to rule over other people, that to do so is in profound opposition to our heritage. And so I have pursued peace with all of my heart and soul, both realistically and optimistically, knowing its achievement remains our most essential task. Israel is small in territory, but it must be great in justice.
When I became prime minister in 1984, peace was my highest priority. Within my first four months in office, I executed a plan to withdraw our troops from Lebanon, where Israel had been fighting a misguided and fruitless war. But the economic emergency Israel faced took up the lion’s share of my effort. By the time we had rescued our state from financial and fiscal calamity, our unity government had met its rotation deadline. Though many in my party insisted I not uphold my end of the bargain with Yitzhak Shamir, I have always been a man of my word. And so when the time came, I did what I had promised to do, stepping down into the role of foreign minister and ceding the prime minister’s office to Shamir. I was no less committed to peace in my new role, nor any less willing to pursue it. But, as I would come to learn, doing so without the support of the prime minister would be the undoing of my first major attempt.
•••
The year was 1987. It had been nine years since Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords, an achievement that few had believed possible. After three wars with the Egyptians, after nearly four decades in a constant state of conflict, after so much blood had been spilled and so much animosity calcified, the quest for peace was considered unimaginably naïve. And yet it was only four years after the end of the Yom Kippur War that Sadat made his visit to Israel, the breakthrough that would end in peace and partnership, a treaty signed and upheld to this day.
It was from that great victory for peace that I drew inspiration—to seek peace with the Jordanians and the Palestinians, thus ending another deadly conflict with our neighbors. I had envisioned something other than a two-state solution back then; it was what I called a tripartite solution, as it would include three autonomous areas: the State of Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan, and a joint entity in the West Bank for the Palestinian people, which would have its own parliament to run local affairs. In national affairs the Palestinians would have the right to vote, either in Israeli or Jordanian elections, depending on their citizenship.
My first overtures would be complicated. We had no diplomatic relations with Jordan. It was against the law to cross the border, to engage with the Jordanians personally or diplomatically in any way. Nearly our entire eastern border touched theirs, which made Israel vulnerable. Jordanian belligerence was a constant concern, a threat that argued for the necessity of peace. I believed it was time to begin the effort, however treacherous it might be.
And so I jumped in as best I could, trying to build a strategy that would start the conversation. The first move, I decided, was to place a phone call to a prominent London attorney named Victor Mishcon. Mishcon was a friend of mine and of Israel. He was also a friend of Jordan’s King Hussein.
“Will you try to set up a meeting between King Hussein and me in London?” I asked unabashedly. There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “I will be happy to try, Shimon,” he said, “but I don’t want to get your hopes up. It would surprise me if he agreed to.”
“Peace is always a long shot,” I replied. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the shot.”
Several days later, I received a phone call from Mishcon, so eager he could barely contain himself. “Shimon, King Hussein has agreed!” he exclaimed. “I suggested the two of you have lunch at my house in London. He’s eager to have the conversation!”
“I’m delighted to hear it, and for your discretion in hosting,” I replied. “We are about to walk into a rare reality, and, perhaps, an even rarer opportunity.”
By 1987, I had abdicated the position of prime minister to Yitzhak Shamir, as part of the unity government agreement we had struck. Though I was foreign minister and had broad authority, on something as sensitive as a secret meeting with Jordan, protocol demanded that I get Shamir’s approval first. When I raised the plan with him, he didn’t object—though not because he was interested in pursuing peace. Rather, he believed that any such attempt was hopeless, and that there was no harm in proving this to be true.
Accompanied by Yossi Beilin, the director of the ministry of foreign affairs, and a senior representative from Shamir’s office, I landed in London in April 1987. We arrived at Mishcon’s beautiful home, where we were greeted by King Hussein and Zaid Rifai, Jordan’s prime minister. It was a surreal moment, shaking hands with sworn enemies in such an unassuming environment. But there was a power in it, too—the power to remind us that something extraordinary might be possible. For the sake of secrecy, Victor’s wife had dismissed the staff and took on the task of hosting us, cooking a marvelous meal from scratch and serving it herself.
From the very beginning, Rifai seemed reluctant to be participating in any discussions of peace—even reluctant to break bread with the Jews across the table. It was clear he was not there on his own accord, but out of obligation to the king he served. Hussein, on the other hand, was warm and open from the moment we arrived. There was an excitement in his voice and his body language; I excitedly recognized a man who was gazing to the future with optimism and hope.
We sat around the table, in front of the beautiful lunch Mrs. Mishcon had prepared, and the king and I spoke to each other in English, not as enemies, but as newfound friends. We saw in each other a similar desire for a different relationship, and agreed that the moment was ripe to bring the conflict that had haunted our countries to an end. I had not arrived in London expecting such a reception—this was intended to be an initial overture, a chance to see if peace might eventually be possible. But as the conversation continued, it became increasingly clear that we had a chance, that very same day, to take a much more concrete step than I had imagined. As dusk settled onto misty London, Hussein and I had moved from broad strokes to concrete details, all with Rifai sitting in quiet frustration. When the meal was over, Mrs. Mishcon came in to clear the dishes.
“Let Mr. Peres and I do the dishes,” Hussein said. “You’ve already done more than enough.”
“Yes, that’s a wonderful idea,” I added. “Whenever Sonia cooks, I’m in charge of the dishes.”
In the moment before Mrs. Mishcon could respond, I could already picture the scene, two former enemies, standing side by side as friends, the foreign minister of Israel in charge of scrubbing, the king of Jordan in charge of drying. It was an invitation to do something so simple, yet so intimate and meaningful and humble. But before we had the chance, Mrs. Mishcon interrupted.
“Absolutely not, gentlemen,” she said firmly. “I would be mortified, and you have work to do.”
We relented out of respect, and instead returned to our conversation. I suggested we put together a nonbinding conference for negotiations, one delegation from Israel, one representing both the Jordanians and the Palestinians. Hussein agreed.
“This is a holy challenge for me, a religious duty,” he said. In that moment, I suddenly saw a direct line from the informal conversation we had undertaken to the signing of a peace treaty—and I believed I knew exactly how to get there. It was time to escalate our talks.
“In that case,” I replied, “why don’t we try to write down an agreement together, based on these discussions, right now?”
“I have another engagement I must go to,” he replied, “but I can be back in an hour.” In the meantime, he suggested that we should draft two documents: one describing the logistics of the peace conference, the other setting out the principles of agreement between our two countries. As soon as the king and prime minister left, we got to work. I dictated both documents as my aide typed feverishly. By the time Hussein and Rifai had returned, the first drafts of both documents were ready to be discussed.
When the Jordanians were finished reading the document, Rifai started listing the changes he wanted to make, but Hussein stopped him almost immediately. “These drafts reflect the agreement we discussed,” he said. “I’m content to move forward.” I was, admittedly, taken totally by surprise: the agreement we had put forward was quite fair to Israel. Not only did it create a path to peace with the Jordanians, it resolved the Palestinian question without requiring Israel to relinquish any of its territory or to change the status of Jerusalem.
The agreement stood in stark contrast to the order of the day, in which Jordan was a dangerous enemy interested in war, not peace. That we had made such progress at all was enchanting. That it had happened so quickly was inconceivable. In the course of a single day, it felt as if we had taken steps forward, that could be measured in years, to end a conflict that had lasted for decades.
Much like the Camp David Accords, we agreed it would be helpful to have the United States put forward the proposal as a distinctly American one, allowing each side to agree to it without revealing the secret negotiations from which it had been born. We would send it to George Shultz, the secretary of state, and ask him to present it back to us.
I flew home that night brimming with delight. In the thirty years since, we have never come close to achieving peace with so few concessions.
I phoned Shamir as soon as I landed, and we agreed to meet alone, after the weekly cabinet session. As we sat together, I described the improbable experience of the previous day, giving him a detailed account of the conversation with the king and prime minister, and the documents we had produced. I read each to him, expecting him to light up in similar joy. But he sat quietly, seemingly unmoved. He asked me to read them to him again, and again I did. Still, there was no emotion on his face. He had not expected such a breakthrough, and it was suddenly clear to me that he hadn’t wanted one to begin with. He had approved the conversation believing it was doomed, and that I, the dreamer, the fantasizer, was the perfect fool for the job.
Engaging in peace talks is like being a pilot. The mother wants him to fly low and slow, out of fear for his safety. But this is precisely how a plane falls out of the sky. In order to make peace, one must fly high and fast; it is the only way to avoid a crash. I know, from decades of experience, the consequences of both. Now I feared that Shamir had always intended my ascent to be a slight one.
Shamir asked me to leave the documents with him, but I was concerned about doing so. If their contents leaked, it would scuttle the agreement. Besides, I told him, it would be better if the prime minister received the draft documents from the Americans, to reinforce the notion that it was their proposal we were considering, not our own. Neither this, nor any part of our conversation, appeared to sit well with the prime minister, and I left the meeting with a knot in my stomach. Could it really be possible, I wondered, that a moment such as this could be squandered? Was the man who became prime minister only a few months earlier ready to sully the deal?
The tragic answer was that he was. Without consulting me, he sent Minister Moshe Arens to Washington to meet with Shultz. Arens explained that if the United States were to present the draft agreement, Shamir would view it as an inappropriate interference in Israel’s geopolitical affairs. Upon hearing this, Shultz concluded that there was no good reason to present the agreements. Why go out on a limb if Shamir was sure to break it?
I learned of the meeting, and its outcome, after the fact. It was a slap in the face to me personally, and a punch in the gut to the country I loved. Ben-Gurion had been gone for nearly fifteen years, but there was never a time I had missed him more. He would have embraced the breakthrough; Shamir strangled it before it could have the chance to breathe. I made one last attempt to save the deal, pleading with Shultz to reconsider. But even as Shultz grew open to it, it was clear that Hussein had closed the door. Where I felt deeply disappointed, the king felt indelibly betrayed. He had taken a sizable risk and, for it, received nothing in return. He had little interest in rekindling the conversation. The London Agreement, as it became known, was dead. What a devastating blow it was to the State of Israel, and to our efforts at seeking peace and cooperation with our neighbors.
The next five years were difficult for Israel and for the Palestinians. Shamir and his Likud party did nothing to further the peace process, save for a halfhearted participation in an international conference in Madrid. In the meantime, a violent uprising called the first intifada began in the West Bank and Gaza, leaving the streets stained with blood, and a country racked by fear and frustration. The masterpiece that the London Agreement could have been was replaced instead by the ugliness of violence, the disfiguration of war. And yet we persevered, as leaders must, knowing that no door stays shut forever—that with concerted effort, even the heaviest can be pried open.
In 1992, those efforts bore fruit. The Likud party was thrown out of power, and Labor once again took the reins of government. Yitzhak Rabin and I ran against each other in the interparty elections for prime minister. We knew the outcome would be close and so we met before the vote and made a deal: whoever was voted in as prime minister would appoint the other foreign minister. We had been political rivals, of course, but we also believed in each other’s leadership capabilities, and the value that would come from our working close together. We were like two great boxers, allies at odds, with great respect for the other even when we often disagreed. He was deeply granular in his thinking, focused intensely on the details in front of him. My head was always tilted higher, toward the horizon and beyond it. We were different in so many ways, but in ways that made the other stronger, smarter, and wiser. In time, the rivalry became a partnership.
When the votes were tallied, Rabin had narrowly won. It was hard not to be disappointed, but it was the work more than the position that captured my focus. It is hard to escape one’s ego, but I’ve seen in others that the greatest accomplishments come from recognizing that the task at hand matters far more than the title. After the election was over, I went to Rabin to congratulate him and to offer myself as a true partner in the efforts to come. “If you will go and work for peace, you won’t have a more loyal friend than me,” I told him. “But,” I warned, “if you turn your back on peace, you will have no worse enemy than me.” I explained that I believed we had arrived at a unique moment. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 had fundamentally altered the world order, changing the circumstances in the Middle East in a powerful way. For nearly all of our state’s existence, our Arab neighbors had seemingly unlimited access to military and political support from the Soviet Union. With its collapse, suddenly they had neither, creating a paradigm shift in the region.
At the same time, the unity of the Arab world began to crumble, as Iraq invaded Kuwait, and an international coalition that included Arab nations took up arms against Saddam Hussein’s regime. The possibility of progress took on a new and hopeful character. But with the “Jordanian option” no longer on the table, we were faced with a difficult question: With whom should Israel negotiate?
The Palestine Liberation Organization certainly was an option, but a deeply controversial one. Founded in 1964, the group was an organized collective of terrorist organizations that had declared and perpetuated a campaign of horrific violence against Israeli civilians and soldiers in hope of bringing about Israel’s ultimate destruction. For more than three decades the PLO had launched attacks from bases in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, indiscriminately targeting the innocent far away from any battlefield. They attacked a school bus in 1970, murdering nine children, then four years later seized a school and massacred twenty-seven students and adults. They were behind the hijacking of airplanes and hostage standoffs in hotels, along with the brutal killings of eleven Israeli Olympians in Munich in 1972. When the first intifada began in 1987, the PLO played a lead role in organizing and encouraging the bloodshed. And yet, despite the seemingly endless violence, the PLO remained the primary representative of the Palestinian people, having earned broad popular support. Its chairman, Yasser Arafat, was likely the most influential person with whom we could negotiate peace, but he was, first and foremost, a terrorist, a murderer of children, and the idea of sitting across the table from him was, for all of us, a hard thing to imagine.
And yet, over time, it became clear that negotiating with Arafat would be the only prospect for peace. When Rabin and I assumed office, Israel was engaged in fruitless discussions in Washington with a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. Technically, the Palestinian team did not include any members of the PLO. And yet in truth, a number of the negotiators in Washington were formerly members of that terrorist organization and, most important, were taking their orders directly from Arafat, then based in Tunisia. During negotiating sessions, this made the Palestinian negotiators impossibly cautious, unwilling to cede any ground or accept any terms without Arafat’s explicit approval. Thus, despite the best efforts of the Americans, the process started already mired in inertia—and remained that way throughout.
“Look, everything we talk to the Palestinians about, they send a fax to Arafat,” I said to my staff, while airing my frustrations about the lack of progress. “I’m fed up with negotiating by fax machine.”
“What do you propose we do?” asked one of my advisors.
“I’m going to talk to Rabin,” I said. “I think it’s time to start negotiations with the PLO directly.”
I didn’t come to the decision easily. Neither Rabin nor I was eager to start peace negotiations with a terrorist organization. Doing so would force us to confront fundamental moral dilemmas, and daunting political challenges at home. Direct contact with the PLO was technically unlawful, but even if it weren’t, it was likely to be universally unpopular. Arafat was a household name in Israel, easily the most hated person in our country. To directly engage such a man risked the appearance of betrayal. And yet at the same time, I knew that Rabin and I were not there to do nothing in exchange for popularity. The security of Israel and the future of its people depended on our willingness to seek peace. And no peace process can begin until enemies are first willing to engage with one another.
And so I went to Rabin’s office to make the case for a change in our strategy. I argued that out of necessity we should begin negotiations with the PLO in secret, but that we would not come to an agreement of any kind until Arafat publicly and forcefully denounced terrorism and demanded an end to violence. If we were going to shake hands with a terrorist organization, we would only do so once they gave up terror for good.
Rabin was skeptical at first, believing that the negotiations in Washington would eventually turn productive. But soon his frustrations about the stalemate of those talks led him to the same conclusion at which I had arrived: if we were going to have a chance at peace, we’d have to be willing to travel an alternate path. We knew how fraught such a choice would be, that even the act of sitting across from the PLO would risk legitimizing an organization that, as its core tenet, sought the destruction of our state. And yet we also knew an unavoidable truth: One does not make peace with one’s friends. If peace is what we seek, we must have the courage to pursue it with our enemy.
•••
In the early 1990s, three academics—Terje Rød-Larsen of Norway and Yair Hirschfeld and Ron Pundak of Israel—started having direct conversations with members of the PLO about the prospect of making peace with Israel. This was a “track two” negotiation, one done informally and largely for the purpose of identifying possibilities for action. Yossi Beilin, by then my deputy, had been made aware of these conversations through back channels with Rød-Larsen and had been kept apprised of developments as they unfolded. For a time, not much had come from them. But by the spring of 1993, we had learned that a close confidant of Arafat, a man named Abu Ala’a, had joined the discussion about whether and how a peace agreement might be reached.
In the preceding years, the PLO had been thrown out of Jordan, and later driven out of Lebanon, which had forced it to relocate its headquarters to Tunisia. After a decade in which the group’s exile moved it farther and farther from Gaza and the West Bank, the PLO leadership had lost its connection to the Palestinians living in those places. As the organization began to wither, its leadership started to consider something unthinkable among its ranks: that peace with Israel might be its only way to regain power and influence. Indeed, Abu Ala’a expressed far greater willingness than we could have predicted to make the critical concessions that a peace process would require. We were told that he and his fellow negotiators had already floated a number of imaginative ideas with the Norwegians, confirming my impression, contra the Washington talks, that the PLO was in fact looking to strike a deal.
“We should enter the conversation,” I said. “I’ll need to talk to Rabin.”
I believed that negotiations would need to occur in stages if they were to be successful. To enter such discussions with the expectation that all issues would be resolved at once was to expect both the impossible and the unnecessary. Our goal was peace, but that did not mean peace at an infeasible pace. I argued that the goal of the negotiation should be to define a set of mutually agreed-upon principles, a set of promises each side would make to the other. On issues where we found agreement, we would set timetables for their implementations. On those unresolved, we would set timetables for future negotiations.
Rabin and I discussed our ambitions for such a declaration. Without question, we would demand that the PLO renounce terror and recognize our right to exist—and to exist in peace. We would demand that, under any circumstance that involved returning land, Israel would retain both its exclusive ability to control its own borders, and the unquestioned authority to defend itself against threats. In exchange for these commitments, we would propose a gradual process: withdrawing from Gaza and the Jericho area of the West Bank first.
Of critical importance, we believed, was bringing Arafat from Tunis to Gaza, and establishing a Palestinian Council, which he would seek to run pending an internationally supervised election. Though the peace process could start with the PLO, permanent status would only be achievable if we had a negotiating partner that represented the Palestinian people, rather than the factions among them who demanded more and more violence.
After multiple conversations, Rabin agreed that it was worth moving forward. I invited Avi Gil, my chief of staff, and Uri Savir, the Foreign Ministry’s director general, to my official residence in Jerusalem. Avi and I were discussing the situation when Uri arrived.
“What can I do for you?” Uri asked.
“How do you feel about a weekend in Oslo?” I replied.
“Excuse me?” he said with a stunned expression, not because he didn’t understand the request, but because he surely did.
I spent the rest of the afternoon defining the strategy for the initial session, peppering Avi with questions about every detail of our approach, which he and I had been coordinating for weeks. We laid out our goals, both ultimate and immediate, and briefed Uri with strict instructions about how we expected him to conduct the initial conversations.
“When you return, based on your report, we’ll decide how you should proceed,” I told him.
Uri left for Oslo shortly after and returned with a hopeful assessment. Abu Ala’a, the chief negotiator of the PLO, had seemed eager to find agreement. “I believe we’ve arrived at the root of the problem,” Abu Ala’a told Uri. “We have learned that our rejection of you will not bring us freedom. And you have learned that control of us will not bring you security. We must live side by side in peace, equality, and cooperation.” In the report he delivered later to Rabin and me, Uri wrote that while we know everything about the Palestinians, it seemed we understood nothing. It was in that space—in the seeking of deeper understanding, in the mutual reaching for empathy across the divide—that I believed peace might very well take root.
Over the course of the summer, the negotiating teams returned to the lodge to push the effort forward, reporting progress back to me, while they awaited my further instruction. As in any negotiation, there were bumps and breakthroughs, important steps forward followed by frustrating setbacks. There were times when it seemed that even these negotiators, who had formed a special bond, would be unable to overcome impasses. Though the discussions had moved much further along than their Washington counterpart, an inability to come to terms would represent just as painful a failure.
But by early August 1993, negotiations had proceeded so well that we believed a declaration of principles could be reached in the next meeting, which would start on the thirteenth of August. Two days into the session, Arafat told us that he was ready to sign the declaration, assuming we could work out final language on a few outstanding issues. Both negotiating teams believed we would be able to find a meeting of the minds; the breakthrough we had dreamed of seemed to be just within our grasp. After hearing the news, I spent the entire night wide awake, unable to slow the gears spinning around and around in my brain. Though I had spent so much of my life with my eyes fixed on the future, in those sleepless hours it was the past that had overtaken my mind. I thought back to the first time I’d met Ben-Gurion, the first time he’d given me a chance to be part of something so much bigger than myself. I thought back to the wars, the loss, the fear, and the uncertainty, to the days of hunger and insecurity, to the questions of our very survival. I thought of Dimona, and the path its deterrent power had created. I thought of the extraordinary work of the IDF, how critical our military strength had been to make this moment possible. And I heard again, in my head, the words of Ben-Gurion: “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”
That morning, I walked into work with eyes that revealed deep exhaustion, but a mind that was racing, energized by the thrill of the work at hand. I opened the door to my office and turned on the lights only to be startled by the shouts of “Surprise!” A small group of staff and close friends were waiting for me. It was only then that I realized it was my seventieth birthday.
It was a beautiful moment of kindness and warmth, even more so given the circumstances. These were people who had worked so hard by my side and in doing so had claimed ownership over a big piece of my heart. They shared my passion for dreaming, the desire to take on the improbable, and they chased the future with a fervor and focus that left me eternally grateful. The negotiations were still a secret, even to them, but I hoped to share good news with them as soon as I could. In the meantime, I thanked them for all they had done. “I have devoted most of my life to security,” I told them. “What’s left to me, now that Israel is strong, is to bring our young people to peace.”
I left the party and went straight into a meeting with Rabin to discuss our next steps. The staff-level negotiations would take us only so far; I believed it was time for me to enter the negotiations directly, in my official capacity as foreign minister.
I told Rabin that I already had a prescheduled trip to Scandinavia, where I’d been invited to make official visits to Sweden and Norway. I suggested that I use the timing as an opportunity to join the talks myself so that I could close the negotiations on the outstanding issues. My goal, I said, was to get both teams to initial an agreement before I returned home. When negotiations had first begun, Rabin had wanted me to avoid direct contact, believing that doing so could commit the cabinet—and the country—to a negotiation that was still unknown to all of them. But now, as we stood precariously, yet with an agreement so close in our sights, Rabin had become convinced it was time to step up our efforts.
I arrived in Stockholm with Avi, and was soon joined by Rød-Larsen and Johan Jørgen Holst, the Norwegian foreign minister. The idea was to get Abu Ala’a on the phone, to let him know I was there, ready to negotiate, and that he and Holst would need to serve as the liaisons between Arafat and me. Rød-Larsen finally got in touch with Abu Ala’a shortly after 1:00 A.M.
Holst took the phone from Rød-Larsen and, with me sitting next to him, read through the proposed changes in language, most of which involved slight tweaks of wording, and greater clarity in certain passages. When he was finished, he hung up the phone and told us that Abu Ala’a had asked for ninety minutes to discuss the changes with Arafat. The conversation resumed and continued over a series of short phone calls through the early hours of the morning. By 4:30 A.M., we had done what so many had assumed would never happen: come to terms on a Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO. We could hear cheers over the phone line as the negotiators in Arafat’s office burst into shouts and applause. The same emotions that had overcome them had taken the rest of us, too. It was a moment I’ll never forget.
I woke up feeling jubilant the next morning, but those feelings were quickly set aside as I received distressing news. A roadside bomb in Lebanon had killed seven Israeli soldiers. I phoned Rabin to discuss the tragedy. “We are on the verge of something historic,” I told him. “But I fear this news may change the atmosphere for the worse on both sides. Perhaps we should postpone.” Rabin was similarly concerned, but he felt that delay was not an option—there was simply not enough time. We proceeded as planned.
The next day, my trip brought me to Norway, where I was put up in a Norwegian government guesthouse. I went through the motions of my official schedule, including a dinner in my honor. As the meal wound down, I excused myself, noting that I was still quite jet-lagged from the journey, but as soon as I got back to the guesthouse I slipped away from my entourage to witness the secret signing ceremony of the Declaration of Principles. All the relevant players had relocated to Norway, given Holst’s central role in forging the agreement; here, so far from the Middle Eastern sun and sand, and so far from expectations, enemies would clasp hands. It was a beautiful—and emotional—moment.
I was not to sign myself; the Israeli government had yet to approve the documents. Instead, negotiators from both sides were to initial the declaration, and in doing so, set us on a course toward a formal agreement. And so it went: the extraordinary and improbable work of both teams was now represented in a declaration that had the power to change the course of our history. To see all of these men together, tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces, was a reminder that, for all of our differences and despite a harrowing past, we believed a better, safer, more peaceful future was not only possible, but essential. I struggled to restrain my own emotions as I watched the moment unfold, fighting back joyful tears for the sake of appearing diplomatic.
When the signing was over, each member of the negotiating teams spoke. Abu Ala’a said something I’ll never forget: “The future that we look for will not materialize unless we together overcome the fears of the past and learn from the past lessons for our future.” When the remarks portion was finished, Abu Ala’a came over to me to introduce himself. It was the first time I’d had a conversation with a member of the PLO directly. “I have keenly followed your declarations, statements, and writings,” he said, “which confirmed to us your desire to achieve a just, permanent, and comprehensive peace.” We retired to a separate room, just the two of us, and spent thirty minutes speaking alone in English, our common language. I impressed upon him our commitment to the agreement, and I told him he would have my help, and the help of the international community, in providing economic assistance to the blossoming Palestinian project.
And yet I knew that this effort was still far from official. There was critical work that still had to be done. First, I would need to go to the United States to personally inform Secretary of State Warren Christopher of our breakthrough, to make sure we would have the support of the Americans. There were some among us who feared that they would be angry at not having been included in the negotiation—though they knew it was under way—or that the work of our track had undercut their own efforts. Without America’s support, I doubted we could hold the process together, or undertake the future negotiations the Declaration of Principles demanded.
I left Israel for the United States on August 28. Christopher was vacationing in California, so we arranged to meet him at the Point Mugu Naval Air Station, just off the Pacific Coast. Dennis Ross, the head of the United States’ peace team, flew to join us there, as well. I greeted them both with excitement in my heart, and tried to convey my hopefulness in words. When I told them we had signed off on a Declaration of Principles, they were stunned, both eager to see the document. I stood there patiently as they read it, and watched their disbelief disappear before my eyes.
“Dennis, what do you think?” asked Christopher, before giving me his own comments.
“I think this is a great historic achievement,” Ross responded with enthusiasm.
“Absolutely!” replied Christopher, a grand smile on his face.
I wanted the United States to adopt the Declaration of Principles as its own initiative, and requested that we hold the signing ceremony at the White House. I also had another document to share.
“There’s more,” I told them. “We’ve been working in parallel on the issue of mutual recognition, and I believe we will soon have a deal.”
From the beginning of negotiations, I believed that mutual recognition was essential, that we needed to reach a point where each side could affirm the legitimacy of the other. I was well aware of the challenges that required us to overcome. The PLO would need not only to transform itself, but to reverse itself, to walk away from its founding principles and disavow the terrorism that had been its primary weapon. We, too, would have to accord the PLO and the Palestinians a respect we had not previously extended. The demands of mutual recognition struck at the very ideology that had been at the center of our conflict, and were different, in kind, than those of the Declaration of Principles. Whereas the declaration set goals and defined timetables for future negotiation, the demands of mutual recognition were—with the exception of wording—fundamentally nonnegotiable.
By the time I showed our list of points to Christopher and Ross, we were close to an agreement on mutual recognition. Again, the Americans were stunned by how far we had come.
“You’ve done a tremendous job,” Christopher said. “My initial response to these developments is very, very positive.” He and Ross agreed that we should move forward with a week of intensive negotiations. And they suggested that if Israel reached a point where it could recognize the PLO, the United States would likely do the same.
For several days in September, we held firm on our list of demands. In exchange for Israel recognizing the PLO as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, Arafat would need to recognize Israel’s right to exist, unconditionally; deliver a full-throated renunciation of terrorism; call for an immediate halt to the intifada; and provide a firm commitment to resolve future conflicts through peaceful negotiation rather than violence.
By the afternoon of September 7, 1993, Arafat was ready to accept our demands. Two letters were drafted, one for Arafat, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, the other for Rabin, recognizing the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Rabin and I received them by fax in Jerusalem, as Arafat received them in Tunis. Rabin received approval from the cabinet to sign the letter, while Arafat received the same approval from the PLO Executive Committee. In the early-morning hours of September 10, the Norwegian foreign minister brought the letters to the prime minister’s office, which had been filled with journalists and cameras. Holst took his seat on one side of Rabin and I sat on the other as we, and the world, watched him affix his signature to the simply stated letter. The PLO had recognized our right to exist, and in return, Israel had done the same.
Three days later, on September 13, 1993, mutual recognition was celebrated in a poignant expression on the South Lawn of the White House, in a handshake that was watched—and remembered—the world over. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat had never imagined they would find themselves in such a situation, but there they stood, under the bright summer sun, as President Clinton pulled them closer together. Rabin shook the hand of his sworn enemy with some reluctance. He saw the promise of peace, and the size of the momentous achievement, but he still recoiled at what was required. During the accompanying applause, he turned to me and whispered, “Now it’s your turn.”
Moments later, in front of a crowded South Lawn, and with cameras of every international news organization imaginable, I took a seat at a wooden table, picked up a pen, and signed my name to the Declaration of Principles—on behalf of the country I always believed in, and with the hope for a brighter future.
•••
After several days of working sessions in Washington, D.C., I flew back to Israel with the negotiating team, arriving at the airport just after 4:00 A.M.
“Be in my office at seven,” I told the group. “The work is only beginning.”
They arrived for the meeting exhausted, only to find me eager to keep them going.
“It’s time to storm Jordan!” I exclaimed. They laughed heartily, at first, assuming—or at least hoping—that I was telling a joke. But it took only a moment for them to realize I was serious, and to make the case that, this time, my dreams needed reining in. They argued that the opportunity for peace with the kingdom was terribly unlikely, that we had seen little movement or willingness to reengage the conversation. And given that the basis for both the failed London Agreement and the disappointing Washington talks had centered on a joint solution with Jordan and the Palestinians, the team felt that Jordan would be particularly frustrated to have been left out of the peace process.
I knew the arguments well, but I disagreed. Perhaps King Hussein would indeed be irked about the bilateral nature of our agreement with the Palestinians. But that agitation, I believed, was more likely to lead to engagement than isolation. For many years, the king had maintained relationships in Jerusalem that were important to his ultimate goals. But if our efforts succeeded—if we were to reach comprehensive peace with the Palestinians—Hussein would fear losing his influence, being replaced, in essence, by Arafat. The strategic considerations, in such a case, would likely outweigh his personal frustrations.
“Trust me,” I told my team. “The king won’t want to be left behind.”
I also felt that if the king were willing to engage in direct talks, we were likely to come to a favorable agreement rather quickly. When Hussein and I worked out the details of the London Agreement, it was clear that I was sitting across the table from a man who saw the power and necessity of peace. His willingness to accept my terms, despite his doubts, was surely a reflection of this view.
My team went to work immediately, developing the framework for discussions in Jordan’s capital, Amman—everything from the planning and logistics of an initial meeting to the contours of a peace agreement we would find acceptable. In the meantime, I approached Rabin to seek his opinion—and ultimately, his approval. Like my negotiating team, Rabin was skeptical. He had spoken to King Hussein on October 19, 1993, and was immediately rebuffed when he raised the prospect of a peace treaty. Hussein suggested he consider a series of interim agreements, but comprehensive peace was out of the question. Even so, I told Rabin I believed I could make a deal, and asked for his blessing to try. Skeptical though he was, Rabin agreed.
I spoke with the Americans as well, and was once again told that I was flying a bit too close to the sun. Even if I could make progress with Hussein, they thought Syria would be an obstacle. President Hafez al-Assad had made clear to his fellow Arab states that any discussion of peace needed to be done as a region, that separate deals between individual countries and Israel were simply unacceptable. Given the geopolitical situation, the Americans believed Assad could stop our progress in its tracks. And yet they too offered their help—including the possibility of serving as mediators—if it turned out my fantasy was closer to reality than they imagined.
On the first day of November 1993, I donned a hat and fake mustache. Because we lacked relations with Jordan—and were technically still in a state of war—Avi Gil and I, along with Efraim Halevy, the deputy director of Mossad, would have to make our way to the royal palace in secret. I couldn’t help but laugh as I glued the mustache to my face. Nor could I help but feel the pull of the past. I thought back to the sunglasses we put on Moshe Dayan in place of his distinctive eye patch; of the wide-brimmed hat we affixed to Ben-Gurion’s head to hide his characteristically chaotic white hair. How many times in my life had we put on such silly disguises in pursuit of something that others were certain was impossible? These were some of the very best memories of my relative youth. And knowing at seventy that I was still in the fight, still battling for the future of Israel, gave the mustache a certain power. I looked like an actor in a low-budget stage show, but I felt like the tip of the spear.
We drove across the Allenby Bridge and into Jordanian territory, eventually arriving at the Royal Court, situated atop a hill in the old sector of Amman. We were escorted to Raghadan Palace (one of many in the king’s court), which shared the same Islamic features of the architecture one could find in east Jerusalem. We were brought to Throne Hall, its vaulted ceilings decorated with intricate art from the Arab world, where we were greeted by the king. I made sure to remove my fake mustache before the conversation began.
It had been seven long years since Hussein and I sat together with such an important mission before us. Yet from the moment the conversation began, it felt like it had never quite ended. We treated each other as old friends, and found once again a common view of the future. Though there were central political issues that had to be discussed and overcome, I decided the best approach was to bypass them by focusing the king’s attention on a new economic vision for the Middle East.
I spoke at great length about my dream, not just of peace in the region, but of prosperity, too, and promised the same kind of economic assistance that I had pledged the Palestinians. “Israel does not want to be an island of wealth in a sea of poverty,” I told him. “And though we have no interest in meddling in your internal affairs, we are willing—and eager—to help.” Among my suggestions was that Israel launch an initiative to invite thousands of corporate leaders from around the world to Amman to discuss investing in Jordan, one of many critical steps that could remake the Middle East over time. I described a vision of partnership and friendship across borders, one that would offer untold benefits to both of our countries. I asked him to imagine foreign investment pouring into the Middle East, creating the economic prosperity that was a prerequisite for lasting stability. Hussein was enthusiastic about the prospect, enough so that he agreed to let me step away so that we could put a framework on paper. Avi, Efraim, and I retired to a nearby room.
“Help me with this,” I asked Efraim, who proceeded to work with me on a four-page document that defined the parameters of a future peace agreement. I asked Avi to review the terms and offer his counsel and input. When the document was completed, I sent Efraim back to the Jordanians to present what I had dictated.
To my delight, the Jordanians offered minor changes, but accepted the terms as I had laid them out. In addition to the establishment of the economic conference, the agreement, which we termed a “nonpaper,” included the establishment of two international committees: one to deal with the issue of refugees, another to develop solutions to the political and territorial issues that would need to be overcome to reach a true peace treaty.
On November 2, King Hussein and I shook hands and affixed our signatures to the handwritten document, setting the stage for further and deeper discussions that would carve a path to a new and necessary future. Hussein’s only request was that we keep the agreement secret. We readily agreed.
Avi, Efraim, and I left Amman filled with hopeful momentum, deeply encouraged both by the progress we’d made and the pace at which we’d achieved it. I felt as though I were living in a dream, one of my own creation, confident for the first time in years that the dashed London Agreement had not been our only chance for a lasting peace with our neighbor. I couldn’t stop smiling as Avi and I regaled one another with the achievements of the day. I was more excited than at any time I could remember since childhood, filled with relief and hope and pride. My elation enveloped me, more perhaps than is wise. In a rare moment in a long career of absolute secrecy, it caused me to make a careless mistake.
I had arrived at a television studio to provide a routine interview as foreign minister. “Remember November the second!” I said with delight while waiting in the “green room,” thinking back to the extraordinary day. I thought it was sufficiently cryptic, nothing more than a throwaway line. I turned out to be wrong.
Unbeknownst to me, I had been overheard by journalists, some of whom were somehow able to interpret my remarks. They concluded that an agreement must have been reached and that I must have been in Jordan. I didn’t know I had committed an error until the peace talks were leaked to the media as an unconfirmed rumor. King Hussein was understandably furious that his request had not been honored, and was concerned about the consequences for Jordan at home. It was enough for him to call off the peace process—enough to strand our historic breakthrough.
With our agreement suddenly in peril, it seemed clear there was only one way to save it: Rabin would need to take the lead on the remaining negotiations, and I would have to retreat behind the scenes. I was disappointed: in myself for having slipped, and in the result. But my sights never wavered from the goal of peace.
By May 1994, a calmed and again optimistic Hussein was back at the negotiating table, with Rabin sitting across from him. Because Hussein and I had already negotiated the core terms of an agreement, the peace process, once restarted, moved with impressive speed. On July 25, Rabin and Hussein joined Clinton in Washington for the signing of a nonbelligerence pact, declaring the end of hostilities between our two countries and calling for a negotiation that would lead to a peace treaty. For the rest of the summer and into the fall, teams from Jordan and Israel held a number of negotiating sessions to finalize the agreement. By the end of October, a genuine peace was at hand: on a blistering hot day in the Arava Valley, not far from Eilat, on the rim of the Red Sea, at the crossing between Jordan and Israel, five thousand guests joined us for the signing of a treaty that would officially end forty-six years of war. President Clinton was there to witness the moment, and to offer a few words of inspiration.
“This vast, bleak desert hides great signs of life,” he said. “Today we see the proof of it, for peace between Jordan and Israel is no longer a mirage. It is real. It will take root in this soil.”
When it was Hussein’s turn to speak, he described our achievement as “peace with dignity” and “peace with commitment.”
“This is our gift to our peoples and the generations to come,” he exclaimed to the audience.
Rabin used the moment to call not just for peace, but for unity. “We have known many days of sorrow, and you have known many days of grief,” he said. “But bereavement unites us, as does bravery, and we honor those who sacrificed their lives. We both must draw on the springs of our great spiritual resources, to forgive the anguish we caused each other, to clear the minefields that divided us for so many years and to supplant them with fields of plenty.”
I spoke only briefly: to thank President Clinton for his support; to thank King Hussein for his trust; and, most important, to thank Prime Minister Rabin for his leadership.
“I shall do something improper and tell you about my own prime minister. He did a great job, with great courage and wisdom,” I remarked of Rabin. I added that it was in our dogged pursuit of peace that we had become more than colleagues; we had become kin. “We were born as sons of Abraham,” I said. “Now we have become brothers in the family of Abraham.”
Less than a week later, the promise I had made to King Hussein to bring together business leaders from around the world was realized—albeit hosted not in Jordan but in Morocco. During the year leading up to the peace treaty, none of my advisors believed that such an event would come to pass. Yet now the Middle East/North Africa Economic Summit opened in Casablanca with four thousand participants. It was the first time that Israelis and Arabs had the chance to meet together, not to negotiate peace politically, nor to keep peace militarily, but to build peace economically.
King Hassan II of Morocco had made available a special tent for King Hussein and me, where the leadership of more than a dozen Arab countries—along with leaders and businessmen from more than fifty other countries—could meet with us, and speak about their hopes, their aspirations, and their immediate needs in developing a New Middle East. What became instantly clear was that our efforts at peace had not just made collaboration with the Palestinians and Jordanians possible; it had opened up the entire region.
“The entire world is gradually evolving from a universe of enemies into an arena of opportunities and challenges,” I said in remarks to the conference attendees. “If yesterday’s enemy was an army threatening from without, today’s source of violence is principally the menace from within: poverty breeding despair.
“This is not a new philanthropy,” I emphasized. “This is a new business strategy, using purely economic logic. . . . Here in Casablanca, we are entrusted with the obligation to take the first step in transforming the Middle East—from a hunting ground into a field of creativity.”
•••
The march toward peace continued. We held several follow-up negotiations with the Palestinians, as prescribed in the Declaration of Principles. In May 1994, we signed the Gaza-Jericho agreement, which, among other things, established the Palestinian Authority. Within two months, Arafat returned to Gaza, where he was elected the Palestinian Authority’s first president. In September 1995, we signed an interim agreement with the Palestinians, known as Oslo II, which expanded Palestinian self-government in the West Bank, while setting May 1996 as the latest date at which negotiations over a permanent solution would begin.
But in spite of our progress, the mood had darkened throughout Israel. In its willingness to seek a peace agreement with the Israelis, the Palestinian Authority had made enemies of radical terrorist organizations that rejected any peace negotiation with Israel as illegitimate. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose leadership was furious at the prospect of any Israeli-Palestinian agreement, attempted to undermine the peace process through continual acts of unspeakable violence, including sending suicide bombers onto buses and into crowded neighborhoods and big cities, directly targeting civilians. The Palestinian leadership didn’t put a stop to the attacks. In some cases, they even helped coordinate them. There were bombings in April 1994 and then again in October and November, and then again in January 1995 and April and August. A growing coalition of Israelis, having abandoned hope for peace, had starting calling instead for a military response. There were protests and demonstrations, chants of “Death to Arabs” and “Death to Arafat” echoing through the streets, and demands not only for small-scale retribution but for war itself.
These conditions created an enormous leadership challenge for Rabin and me. The hope that sprang from Oslo was increasingly hidden from view, receding among some, dying among others. Women and children were being murdered in the streets, and yet we were still involved in ongoing negotiations, still working with a faction of Palestinians who understood the imperative of peace. We couldn’t abandon the effort, not after how far we had come, not after the commitment we had made to the children of Israel, and to those not yet born. And so we pressed on, together, with the understanding that if we were voted out of power, it would be because we stood up for Jewish values even in the face of impossible odds.
After so many years of rivalry and partnership, it was only during that summer that my respect for Rabin would become genuine admiration. He and I had become targets of vile attacks, not just in the media, but on the streets. Opponents dressed our effigies in Nazi uniforms and burned them. They marched in droves through the streets, at one point carrying a coffin meant for Rabin. It was horrifying.
I remember being told about one particularly shocking moment, as Rabin walked past the Wingate Institute in Netanya, between Haifa and Tel Aviv. The gathered crowd began to shout abominable things, swearing and screaming, and even spitting on the prime minister. Rabin didn’t change his pace or his expression; he walked past it all, head held high, giving off the aura of a man of conviction, a man too busy in his pursuit to be swayed by such vile behavior. He showed extraordinary courage in those dark days, refusing to back down no matter the personal price. In the months that would follow, I never saw him once cancel a meeting or appearance—indeed, I never saw him give up any ground to the forces of hatred. He simply carried on.
As violence at home continued to drain support for the peace process, Rabin feared that if elections were held, we were likely to lose. Recognizing that we had to recapture the enthusiasm for peace, and tamp down the preference for war, I suggested we hold a grand rally—a peace rally, one that would give us the chance to show the Israeli people that though the voices of peace were being drowned out by the shouting fury of the opposition, they hadn’t disappeared. Indeed, I believed that a peace rally had the power to draw those out who were afraid to raise their voices, encouraging more to do the same, which in turn could create a hopeful energy that would reverberate throughout the country. It could convince the people to believe again in the beauty and power of the future we were trying to make possible.
Rabin was anxious about the idea. “Shimon, what if it’s a failure?” he asked me in a late-night call a few evenings after we first discussed the idea. “What if the people don’t come?”
“They will come,” I promised him.
Rabin and I arrived at the rally on November 4, 1995, to find a scene beyond our wildest expectations. He was stunned to see more than a hundred thousand people, gathered together in peace, for peace, in what was then known as Kings of Israel Square.
“This is beautiful,” he said to me, once we met up at the venue and took our place on the balcony of city hall, overlooking the rally. It was there that we were overcome by the crescendo of cheering below. In the reflecting pool beneath us there were young Israelis jumping and splashing, smiling and dancing, a gorgeous reminder of what we were fighting for: not our own future, but theirs.
Rabin had truly been taken by surprise. It was the happiest I’d ever seen him—possibly the happiest day of his life. Across so many decades of working together, I had never heard him sing. Now all of a sudden he was singing “Shir l’shalom,” the song of peace, out of a songbook he held in his hand. Even at the height of our greatest achievements, Rabin had never hugged me. All of a sudden, he hugged me.
As our time at the event drew to an end, we got ready to leave. We were supposed to all go down together, but just before we planned to depart, members of the intelligence service came in to speak with us. They had credible information that there would be an attempt on our lives, and for security purposes they wanted to change the way we had planned to exit. The intelligence suggested that the attacker was Arab; nobody could have imagined a Jewish assassin. When we were ready to go, they wanted us to walk separately toward our cars. It was not the first time we had heard such a warning; we had gotten used to staying calm in such circumstances.
Our security teams returned a few moments later to let us know that the cars were ready and waiting below. They wanted me to exit first, followed by Rabin. Before I turned to walk down the stairs, I went over to find Rabin. He was still happy as a child. I told him I was to leave first, and that I looked forward to talking about this triumph the next day. He gave me another hug. “Thank you, Shimon. Thank you.”
I started down the steps toward my car, as cheers continued to echo all around me. Before I entered my car, I looked back to see Rabin walking down the stairs about one hundred feet behind me. My security agent opened the car door for me, and as I bent down to get in I heard a sound that still wakes me some nights, all these years later—the sound, in quick succession, of three shots being fired.
I tried to stand back up. “What happened?” I shouted to the security guard. But instead of answering me, he pushed me into the car and slammed the door as the car screeched off into the distance.
“What happened?” I demanded of the security officer who was driving. “What happened?”
They drove silently to the headquarters of Israel’s Security Agency and ushered me inside, ignoring my demands for an answer. “Where’s Rabin?” I insisted once we finally arrived. “Tell me what has happened.”
It was then that I heard that there had been an attempt on his life. That he had been shot. That he had been taken to the hospital. But how severe the injuries, no one could say.
“Where is the hospital?” I demanded. “I am going there right now.”
“You can’t go there,” said one of the security officers. “Your life is still in danger. We cannot let you go back out.”
“You can talk of danger all you want,” I said. “If you don’t drive me there, I will go there by foot.” Realizing they had little choice in the matter, the security officers obliged and drove me swiftly to the hospital. When I arrived, no one knew if Rabin was still with us. A crowd had gathered outside the hospital, weeping, fearing the worst, praying for a miracle.
“Where is he? What happened to him?” I asked of the first hospital staff I could see. No one had an answer—just tears in their eyes. “Take me to him!” I shouted. In all of the commotion, the head of the hospital saw me, and I him, and suddenly we were rushing toward each other.
“Tell me what has happened. Please.”
“Mr. Peres,” he said, with a crack in his voice, “I am sorry to have to say, the prime minister is dead.”
It was like someone had attacked me with a knife, my chest laid bare, my heart punctured. I had forgotten how to breathe. I had just seen Rabin’s face, smiling like I’d never seen before. There was so much life in him, so much hope and promise. And now “Shir l’shalom,” our song for peace, was quite literally stained with blood—in the pages of the songbook Rabin was holding when attacked. The future we had fought for was suddenly so uncertain. How could it be that he was gone?
I turned and walked away from the doctor with a ringing in my ears, like a bomb had gone off, like I was surrounded by the chaos of war. Down the hallway I saw Leah, Rabin’s wife, standing at the epicenter of an unimaginable tragedy. I could see that she had been told the words I could not imagine Sonia having to hear: the worst is true.
Leah and I went together to say a final farewell. He had a smile on his face—the face of a happy man, in total rest. Leah approached him and kissed him one last time. Then I went up to him. In wrenching sorrow, I kissed his forehead and said good-bye.
I was so distraught that I could barely speak when the minister of justice came to me.
“We have to appoint someone prime minister, immediately,” he said. “It cannot wait. We cannot leave the ship without a captain. Especially not now.”
“When? What?” It was all I could muster.
“We will nominate you,” he said. “We’re convening an emergency cabinet meeting. We must leave the hospital and go there right now.”
We gathered together, holding a makeshift memorial for our fallen brother. All of the ministers agreed that I should take over as prime minister, voting on the spot to name me Rabin’s successor. It was the most alone I had ever felt.
We were a nation in shock, not only because our prime minister had been killed, but because of the man who had done the killing. He was an Israeli, a Jew—one of our own, an extremist so deluded and desperate to halt our progress toward peace that his cowardly murder of a national hero was a source of pride and satisfaction. His action—and the depraved enthusiasm of the group of fanatics who agreed with him—was beyond anything we could have conjured in the depths of our nightmares. All at once it was maddening and confounding and impossibly painful.
At times of great sorrow, we lean on each other, and so it was for nearly every Israeli. There were spontaneous demonstrations, not of protest, but of love, as thousands took to the street in vigil, lighting candles on behalf of our fallen leader. I felt as though the weight of an entire nation were now resting on my shoulders.
Rabin and I had been great rivals for decades, but had become great partners in recent years. As I said after he passed, it sometimes happens in life that if you are two, you are more than two. If you are one, then you are less than one. I was so much less than one without him. Without warning he was gone and I had inherited a country in turmoil. If I acted incorrectly, I feared civil war. How could I be tough on those who supported the assassination without fanning such dangerous flames? I had so many decisions to make, and so quickly, and the only advice I wanted was his. I was tortured by his silence. When I returned to the prime minister’s office, I couldn’t bring myself to sit in his chair.
But I moved forward, in his honor and on behalf of the vision for peace we had shared. There was still work to be done, a country to heal, a peace process to save, a generation of children on both sides of our borders, to whom we owed a future made better than our past. With so much at stake, I knew I had but one choice: to set the terms of the national agenda, and to make the hard decisions that leadership demands.
•••
The year 2016 marks twenty years since the end of my time as prime minister. When I had first taken the prime ministership after Rabin’s death, Israel was more unified than at any other time in recent memory—not because there was sudden consensus about difficult and divisive issues, but because the loss of Rabin had been such a painful collective blow. As the country mourned, Israelis rallied around each other and closed ranks in support of their new prime minister. Many of the senior leaders in the Labor Party tried to convince me to call an early election. They argued that we were occupying a narrow window in which Labor could maintain its governing majority in the Knesset. Before Rabin’s assassination, the conventional wisdom was that Labor would lose the next election because of the terror attacks. But now, in this moment of national unity, I was sure to win easily, and we were sure to remain in power.
I understood the political logic to their argument. It was clear and persuasive. But I did not see the decision as a political choice; to me it was a moral one. To call an early election was to choose to win power using the spilled blood of Rabin. There was no reality, political or otherwise, in which I would use his death that way.
Instead, I turned back to the work of peace, without Rabin by my side, but with his spirit in my heart. The second stage of the Palestinian negotiations had yet to be completed and, meanwhile, I had already sent Uri Savir to Syria to begin peace negotiations with Assad’s government under my direction. And because terrorism had become such a terrible impediment to peace, I organized an international conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, where world leaders could discuss strategies to fight back against the threat. It was a hard and lonely time for me. My own party was frustrated that I hadn’t called an election. My opponents were criticizing me daily, accusing me of being an appeaser, demanding military actions that would surely kill the peace process. Hamas and Islamic Jihad were meanwhile launching attacks on Israeli citizens. In early 1996, there were five gruesome terrorist attacks in Israel, one after the other, each seemingly worse than the next.
Indeed, the week that the bombings began was the worst of my life. When I visited the site of the first terrorist attack in Jerusalem, I stood before a mangled and melted bus that, just hours earlier, had been transporting everyday people on City Line 18. It looked like the carcass of a slain beast, covered in glass and char and blood. I was too transfixed by the horror of the scene to hear the gathered crowd booing me. “Peres is a murderer!” someone shouted. “Peres is next!” screamed another. I told Arafat that terrorism was strangling the prospects for peace, while he professed to having no power to stop it. “I don’t think you understand what’s at stake. If you do not unite your people under one rule,” I warned, “the Palestinians will never have a state.” Still, the bombings continued. A suicide bombing in Ashkelon. Another at the Purim Festival in Tel Aviv. I went to each site, over the objections of my security team and staff. I felt it was my obligation as prime minister to be there, both for those who had perished and been wounded, and for my country, which needed to be seen by the world as the resilient place it had always been. But when I stood there in Tel Aviv, my home for so long, and saw its streets burned and bloodied at what was supposed to be a joyful festival, I realized that despite my hopes, the environment for peace had grown increasingly untenable in the short term. When elections were held in May of that year, Benjamin Netanyahu prevailed in what was a deeply painful defeat for me. Out of nearly three million votes cast, he won by a margin of fewer than thirty thousand votes—yet it was still enough to drive the Likud party to power and put an end to the chapter Rabin and I had written together.
In the years to follow, there were still attempts to make peace, but the new context made it harder. In time the lifeblood of Oslo was drained, the framework largely discarded. And yet, its legacy remains. We fell short of our grandest ambitions—a permanent solution, a permanent peace—but the work was the beginning of a revolution, a defining moment that produced the foundation for a greater peace to come. It was this effort that gave us the two-state solution—the only framework that has a real chance to succeed. Because of our negotiations with the Palestinians, we still today have a camp of Palestinians, led by Mahmoud Abbas, who seek genuine peace. Without him, we would have only Hamas. Because of our negotiations, we were able to lay the groundwork and the framework for future agreement. An acknowledgment among Palestinians that it is 1967 borders, and not 1947 borders, that are the basis for discussion is in itself a kind of revolution in thinking. Without Oslo, we wouldn’t have been able to open embassies and build relationships with former enemies, nor would we have been able to make peace with Jordan. Oslo allowed us to direct government investments into infrastructure and social programs. It opened up Israel’s economy to the broader Middle East, and the broader Middle East’s to Israel, allowing us to sign agreements and form partnerships that boosted our growth. And it is worth remembering that every subsequent Israeli government, even those that have not chosen peace as a priority, eventually adopted our framework, acknowledging that the only way to put an end to the vicious cycle of violence and terrorism is through peace—through two states, not one.
And yet there continues to be great skepticism about peace—not only whether it’s possible, but whether it’s even desirable. To the first question, I believe that peace is not only possible, but inevitable. The optimism I feel is a function not just of my identity, but of history. History, after all, is a powerful antidote to a cynical view of the world. How many times has it surprised us? How many times has it led us to realities that far exceeded our dreams? Who would have dreamed, after World War II, that just three years later, France, Germany, and Italy would join together in peaceful alliance? How many times did I hear experts tell us that lasting peace with Egypt and Jordan was simply impossible? How many times did the pessimists shake their head at the idea that among the Palestinians there would ever rise a broad constituency against terror?
We have seen the impossible made real again and again. There was a time when the Arab League subscribed to the Khartoum Formula, known as the three “no’s”: never make peace with Israel; never recognize Israel; never negotiate with Israel. Most of the people I worked with most of my life would never have imagined a time when the Arab League would publish an initiative that refutes them all. Never would they have believed that Arab leaders would speak out in favor of peace and against terror, not just abroad, but at home, or that Palestinians would recognize Israel within its 1967 borders. And yet peace, stubbornly, doggedly, finds a way, without consideration of the doubts of the experts.
I believe in the inevitability of peace because I understand the necessity of peace. Necessity is, perhaps, the most powerful concept of all. It is what drove the pioneers to settle the land. It is what pushed them to think creatively—to turn salted dirt into fertile ground, and transform a fallow desert into a community that could bear fruit. It was necessity that sent Ben-Gurion on a mission to build the IDF, to protect us at a time of our greatest vulnerability from the certainty of impending war. It was necessity that called upon Israeli leadership to build the impossible in Dimona, and to risk everything in Entebbe. And likewise, it will be the necessity of peace that brings it, finally—and fully—to fruition. The cost of hostility is simply too high.
I believe with all my being in the virtue of Zionism, and in the historic decision made by Ben-Gurion to accept the UN resolution for a partitioned Palestine. Even then, Ben-Gurion understood that in order to retain the Jewish character of our state, we had to uphold our values, and that our values are fundamentally democratic. Jews are taught that we are all born in the image of God. To believe this fundamental tenet, a Jewish state must embrace democracy, which demands full equality between the Jews and non-Jews. Democracy, after all, is not only the right of every citizen to be equal, but also the equal right of every citizen to be different. The future of the Zionist project depends on our embrace of the two-state solution. The danger, if Israel abandons this goal, is that the Palestinians will eventually accept a one-state solution. Because of demographics, this will leave us with a choice: stay Jewish or stay democratic. But it really isn’t a choice at all. To lose our Jewish majority is to lose our Jewish character. To give up on democracy is to abandon our Jewish values. We must hold on to our values. We didn’t give up our values even when we were facing furnaces and gas chambers. We lived as Jews and died as Jews and rose again as free Jewish people. We didn’t survive merely to be a passing shadow in history, but as a new genesis, a nation intent on tikkun olam, on making the world aright.
In 1996, I established the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation because of my belief in people and their ability to bring positive change, and in recognition that peace cannot solely be made by governments; it must be made between people—between Jews and Arabs. And I have worked over the past twenty years to build those bonds through peace education, business partnerships, agriculture, and health care. But a permanent solution will require the reasoned wisdom of governments—ours and our neighbors. It will require leaders who understand that Israel is strong enough to make peace, and that making peace from a position of strength is imperative. To wait is to guarantee that the agreement will be worse than any we have ever considered; Israel will be negotiating, for the very first time, from a position of weakness. In a reality where immediate peace is the only way to save Zionism, the Palestinian negotiators will hold all the cards.
The question, then, is not whether we will achieve peace, but when, and at what cost, knowing that the longer we wait, the higher it grows. This is why I see grave danger in giving in to skepticism at a time when we should be redoubling our efforts. In history, there is no reverse gear.
As I know far too well, achieving peace is not easy. But there is no alternative but to return to the table. The yesterday between us and the Palestinians is full of sadness. I believe that the Israel and Palestine of tomorrow can offer our children a new ray of hope. The advancement of peace will complete the march of Israel toward the fulfillment of its founding vision: an exemplary and thriving country, living in peace and security in its homeland and among its neighbors.
It has been more than twenty years since I stood on a stage in Oslo and alongside Rabin and Arafat accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Much has changed since then, but my core message remains unaltered: countries can no longer afford to divide the world into friend and foe. Our foes are now universal—poverty and famine, radicalization and terror. These know no borders and threaten all nations. And so we must act swiftly to build the bonds of peace, to tear down walls built with bitterness and animosity, so that we can together confront the challenges and seize the opportunities of a new era.
Optimism and naïveté are not one and the same. That I am optimistic does not mean I expect a peace of love; I expect, simply, a peace of necessity. I do not envision a perfect peace, but I believe we can find a peace that allows us to live side by side without the threat of violence.
In the years to come, we must remember that peace negotiations will never begin with a happy end. They will begin, instead, from an obscure, complicated situation, colored with memories of pain and of violence. And they will take time. So let us rededicate ourselves to that effort, and save the happy end for the ending. I believe with all my heart in the vision of the prophets, the vision of peace, for the country I love so much. And what I know to be true is that a majority of people on both sides of the divide are eager for peace—especially the young generation. They are the ones who transform the impossible into the unlikely, the ones whose creativity and passion will turn the unlikely into reality. Whether the leaders catch up to the young, or the young become the leaders, we are inevitably walking in the same direction. The road will be littered with obstacles. But it remains the only one worth traveling.