The Problem Solver

The election of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 was not an abandonment of Zionist ideology, but a declaration by the Israeli public that they did not want to be entrapped by it. Many were first-time voters with no clear party loyalty. There was a realization that both Israel and the Palestinians – and indeed the world – had moved on since 1948. Shortly after his election victory, Rabin told the Knesset:

Rabin was a disciple of Achdut Ha'avodah's Yigal Allon who had effectively distanced himself from the movement's maximalist ideology when he proposed the Allon Plan after the Six Day war. Rabin similarly followed those who had broken with the rigid ideology of Yitzhak Tabenkin because it no longer accorded with the political reality as he viewed it. Like Allon, he was a territorialist who wished to partition Mandatory Palestine unlike the functionalists of Rafi and the ideologues of the Likud who wished to grant individual autonomy to the Palestinians. While he wished to maintain the security settlements of the Jordan Valley, Rabin said that he would stop the construction of ‘political settlements’ and that he wanted to bring about Palestinian self-rule within nine months. Moreover, he de-emphasized the violence of the PLO and did not refer to them as a bunch of terrorists.