Rabin: Peace Without the Peace Camp
This chapter describes the ambivalent relations between Peace Now and Yitzhak Rabin. Peace Now had had no role whatsoever in drawing up the Oslo agreements. Between 1993 and 1995, while the terms were being drafted by the Oslo negotiators, Peace Now found itself marginalized. And when Rabin went to Washington in September 1995 to sign the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, he invited only one peace activist to accompany him–the founder of an NGO for bereaved parents, who had supported his efforts in support of peace–ignoring Peace Now and its longstanding commitment to a negotiated settlement. The movement's influence was clearly on the wane. Paradoxically, the very peace for which Peace Now and other groups had fought so hard did them barely any good. There are several factors that help explain this phenomenon, the most important of which is the views of the prime minister himself: Rabin mistrusted the peace movement.