Yitzhak Rabin’s True Legacy: A Defender of Israel’s Security

Last week, the Jewish state commemorated the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzḥak Rabin, who served in that position from 1974 to 1977 and then from 1992 to 1995. On the Israeli left, and perhaps even more so on the American Jewish left, a persistent myth remains that, had he not been murdered, the Oslo peace process that he began would have somehow succeeded. On the right, many blame him for embarking on this course in the first place, ushering in years of terror and bloodshed. Efraim Inbar rejects both views:

Only very few [Israelis] deny the fact that overall, the Oslo process was a failure because the Palestinian national movement was not (and still is not) ready for historic compromise with the Zionist movement. There is evidence that Rabin came to this realization as well, before he was assassinated. Rabin was skeptical of the Oslo process from the start, and he projected growing ambivalence. He was considering calling an end to the process.

A close look at Rabin’s core diplomatic and defense views, above and beyond Oslo, does the late prime minister more justice. It is worth remembering that the centrality of Israeli national security in his worldview never wavered.

Rabin was ready for partition of the West Bank, which was the classic Zionist position, but he insisted on defensible borders for Israel. He never entertained a return to the 1967 borders or any territorial swaps. . . . Israel’s defensible eastern border was to be the Jordan Valley (“in the widest sense”). The areas around a united Jerusalem were to be included in Israel. . . . These formulations were (and remain) in sync with the Israeli consensus.

Rabin also believed that Israel would have to live by its sword for many years. Therefore, he insisted that large defense outlays were mandatory even after the signing of peace treaties. According to Rabin, Israeli military power was a necessary condition in guaranteeing the preservation of treaties with neighbors in a turbulent Middle East. This view is still very relevant nowadays.

Read more at Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security

More about: Israeli politics, Israeli Security, Oslo Accords, Yitzhak Rabin

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023