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Was Rabin Fooled by Arafat when They Signed the Oslo Accords?

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah - Two months after the signing of the Declaration of Principles for the Oslo Accords in Washington, I met with Yasser Arafat in Tunis to speak about the future of the negotiations. To my dismay, Arafat told me that the future territory of the nascent Palestinian Authority would stretch from Ein Gev in the north (on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee) to Ein Gedi (situated on the Dead Sea) in the south. He further said that the hills overlooking Jericho were his. Back in Jerusalem, I briefed the Prime Minister about Arafat's position. Rabin did not believe what he heard and asked me to check with our Foreign Ministry. They replied that during the meetings in Oslo there was no mention whatsoever of Arafat's claims. At a December 13, 1993, meeting in Cairo, Rabin met with Arafat alone. Ten minutes later, he came out of the meeting, furious at having been taken in by Arafat's positions. He told the Israeli entourage, "Too bad I didn't meet with Arafat before the Oslo agreements were signed. I would not have signed them." My work with Rabin leaves me with no doubt that he was aware of the contacts being held in Oslo but was not aware of the fine details of the understandings presented there, and he did not seem to have assigned enough importance to those understandings. Moreover, Rabin did not consider Arafat's positions as threatening. Arafat could claim whatever he wanted. There was no way Rabin would accept his whims. Rabin did not call for establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and definitely not on the 1967 lines. He spoke of a political entity - a little more than an autonomy and less than a state - that would be obligated by federative or confederative agreements with Israel and Jordan. The writer was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence. This article is part of the Center's new "Oslo at 30" compendium.
2023-08-24 00:00:00
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