Word: rabins
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...Sharon's objective clearly isn't to get hundreds of thousands of Israelis filling the streets of Tel Aviv singing songs of peace and hope. Indeed, he makes clear in the interview that he sees the Oslo peace process started by Yitzhak Rabin as dangerously deluded - and that he, Sharon, has no intention whatsoever of pursuing it. Withdrawing from the Golan Heights or the Jordan Valley or removing the Israeli settlements dotted throughout the West Bank and Gaza deprives Israel of the "strategic depth" to defend herself, Sharon insists. Returning those lands to Arab control - as his predecessors had considered...
...other words, the kind of comprehensive peace Rabin and Barak had sought is off the agenda, for at least another generation. In the meantime, Sharon says, Israel will continue to live, as it always has, with a sword in one hand, hammering out clear-eyed interim agreements where possible along the way, while rekindling Zionist education of Israel's youth and attracting another 1 million Jewish immigrants to bolster its defenses...
...prime minister's outlook may be relentlessly depressing for anyone inspired by Rabin's vision, but Sharon supporters would see it as simply pouring cold water on the naïve dreams of the peaceniks. And they'll claim the events of the past six months as irrefutable evidence that Oslo could never deliver on its promise to Israelis...
...while there's no question that the historic window of opportunity through which Rabin had moved in a bid to transform Israel's long-term relationship with its neighbors is closing fast, Sharon's reading of the long-term regional dynamic may be dangerously flawed, too. There's no question that economic and demographic factors look set to dramatically weaken the Arab regimes around Israel, but where Sharon sees this as improving the prospects for peace, others are more inclined to see it as raising the danger of war as the pressure of domestic social collapse prompts Arab regimes...
...Taken at his own word, the Israeli leader appears set on disabusing his own people of the (in his view naïve) hope fostered by Rabin and Barak that peace is possible in the short term, instead bolstering their readiness and their will to fight wars cold or hot for the foreseeable future. And whether or not his analysis is sound, it may well be a self-fulfilling prophecy...