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March 4, 2003 //
Interview with Ms.Nancy O’Malley,
a distinguished humanities teacher
at Boston Latin School
How
do you think Yitzhak Rabin would
feel about the situation in Israel
today? In your opinion, what would
he want to say to Yasser Arafat,
who won the Peace Prize with him
in 1994 yet has done little to help
peace recently? To Ariel Sharon,
whose harsh policies against the
Palestinians run directly against
what Rabin espoused?
I
think he’d be brokenhearted
… secondly I think he would
be weeping for the people on both
sides because of their mutually
bad leaders, both of whom represent
the most intransigent views of their
respective peoples. Palestinians
don’t have the chance for
peace, and Israelis who want peace
don’t have the chance. [He
would say] to Arafat: You missed
an opportunity with Clinton, a crucial
opportunity ; to Sharon, your policy
of not resuming peace talks until
all suicide bombings stop actually
encourages them. Secondly, the fact
that he is allowing more and more
settlements to be built actually
encourages more bombings. Obviously
Rabin wouldn’t condone suicide
bombings, but he would encourage
Sharon to stop his oppressive policies
which make the Palestinians unable
to stop the extremists from taking
over.
Do
you find it strange that people
today rarely refer to his accomplishments?
Has the constant violence in Israel
numbened people to the idea of peace?
I
think that unfortunately our memories
are short, and we forget that it
was only a while ago that Rabin
held out the very real prospect
of peace, but ever since Sharon
instigated the last intifadah by
visiting the Temple Mount, there’s
been so much violence and bloodshed,
oppression and reaction to oppression,
that it wiped out the memory of
what Rabin had done.
What
do you feel was unique about Rabin
that set him apart from other leaders?
What
was so sad about his loss was that
he seemed to have empathy for both
sides ; he understood and seemed
to have a sense of the pain on both
sides, and that’s what we
need now.
How
would you respond to people who
say that the current conflict shows
how Rabin was wrong to seek peace?
That the Palestinians never wanted
peace at all?
The
actions of the settlers bulldozing
houses and taking more and more
land for the Jewish settlements,
that’s a form of extreme oppression
and a form of political violence
that people seem to forget. We hear
all about the suicide bombings,
which we should, but we hear very
little about bulldozers going in
and razing villages to raise compounds
for Jewish settlers, and creating
more refugees. Does it prove extremists
are right? No, it just shows how
tragic his loss is.
Do
you feel his achievements with the
Oslo Accords were just a lucky fluke,
or that the possibility is still
there for the same thing to happen
today if someone took a stand as
he did? Or has the violence simply
shattered the two peoples’
readiness for peace?
I
don’t think his contributions
were a fluke – I think he
was a voice for reason. I don’t
think there’s any hope right
now because both sides are so entrenched,
and I feel badly because there seem
to be so few people speaking out
for the rights of the Palestinians.
Rabin had a balanced view, and right
now it seems to be one extreme against
the other, so I don’t have
much hope. It seems to be politically
incorrect to mention that the Palestinians
have rights also – [the fact
that] you can only have that conversation
in limited groups of people, that
shows how far we’ve come from
the days of honest discussion about
the rights of both sides.
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