Tracy Wilkinson reports in a July 20 news story that the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist “may have set in motion the ultimate unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” (“Clemency Decree in Rabin Case Divides Israelis”).
Aside from the fact that this unsubstantiated speculation seems better suited for the opinion pages than a news report, it just does not make any sense. After Rabin was assassinated, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the architect of the Oslo Accords, stepped in as Prime Minister. Is this what Wilkinson meant by the “unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?”
During Peres’ tenure, numerous Palestinians suicide bombers in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and elsewhere took the lives of scores of Israelis. Couldn’t these acts be said to have “set in motion the ultimate unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?”