JERUSALEM Ten years have passed since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the man who launched the Oslo process, which was meant to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and the two peoples are still at each other's throat.
Over the last decade we have witnessed a summit in Camp David where Yasser Arafat rejected a most generous Israeli offer; an intifada; Palestinian terror attacks and Israeli reprisals; the "road map"; new leaders on both sides; and finally a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. After all this, are we closer to peace than we were a decade ago?
If we take the recent statements made by Israeli leaders, then the answer is a resounding no. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz just told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has become so ineffective that he is not a partner for negotiating a peace with Israel. "We shall have to wait for the next generation," Mofaz told the paper. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak has even predicted precisely when peace will have a chance: in 2028, when the generation of 1948 is gone.
Things definitely looked different 10 years ago. A survey by Asher Arian of the Israel Democracy Institute, released this week, shows that in February 1996, 38 percent of Israelis believed that the assassination had actually increased the prospects of peace. In 1999, when Barak was prime minister, the number was down to around 30 percent.
Today, only 7 percent of Israelis hold that Yitzhak Rabin's assassination increased the prospects of peace, while 30 percent believe it had a negative effect on the peace process.
Immediately after the assassination, then, the Israeli public felt that nothing could stop the peace process; the assassination even strengthened the sense of urgency. Over time, this attitude has been reversed - replaced by the sense that Rabin's assassination actually delayed, even halted, the peace process.
That, however, is not the whole picture. Over the last decade, public opinion polls have showed time and again that two of three Israelis steadily support the peace process. In the same IDI survey, conducted in July 2005, most of the Jewish public declared that Rabin's assassination had not changed its attitudes about the peace process (79 percent) or territorial concessions (72 percent).
When the assassination did change someone's attitude toward the peace process, it was mostly toward support for it: 16 percent of those who changed their views in the wake of the assassination became more supportive of the peace process, as opposed to about 5 percent who became less supportive.
The same paradox is visible on the Palestinian side. While the Palestinian public is skeptical about the prospects of a peaceful settlement with Israel, most people are still in favor of peace. In a poll conducted last week by Nabil Kukali of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, a great majority (81.4 percent) of the Palestinians support "putting an end to all forms of weapons chaos, anarchy and the multi-authority society."
The two peoples, then, while pessimistic about the chances to reach a peaceful settlement, nevertheless want one. This is where leadership becomes crucial.
In 1993, Yitzhak Rabin cut the Gordian knot by starting a peace process with the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians.
If, instead of lamenting Abbas's lack of leadership, Ariel Sharon would seize the moment and follow up his brilliant pullout from Gaza with another move - say, evacuating more unnecessary settlements in the north of the West Bank - he could give the Palestinians new hope. Their leaders, in return, would have to reciprocate by turning their people from terror to nation-building.
This could be the harshest blow to the radicals, who dread any peaceful solution: the Palestinian terrorists on one side, and Rabin's assassin and his like on the other.
This article was first published in the International Herald Tribune on November 4, 2005. www.iht.com/opinion.html
The opinions expressed herein are the author's own personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of the Israel Democracy Institute.