Yitzhak Rabin and His Place in History: The Oslo Misadventure and the Need for a Better Historical Account.

This paper advocates a critical understanding of the history of Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo experience. It shows how from his earliest days in office, Yitzhak Rabin believed that making peace with Israel's neighbors had a positive security value and that it was worth taking almost any chance for peace and paying any price. The essay then follows the campaign to mobilize public support for the Oslo "peace process," which relied largely on characteristics of messianic thought, particularly the leadership's turning its back on historical facts. Additionally, this paper examines the means chosen to manipulate people into believing in the process, such as the terminology the government used to describe the consequences of the Oslo agreements. The inquiry shows that when it became clear that the gamble for peace had failed, Rabin did not take action. His greatest miscalculation was that he believed in the principle of reversibility, but the Oslo process could not be reversed. The conclusion is that the basic misunderstanding of Oslo was the belief that it was possible to make peace with the Palestinians. On October 7, 2023, Hamas shattered this illusion, and the government declared that Israel was at war. This declaration represents the formal-legal recognition of an unacknowledged reality that had, in fact, been true for decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]