RABIN ON PERES

By Michael Kramer

What do I fear about Peres?" concerned about answering at all, Yitzhak Rabin mulled the question carefully. This was in the mid-1980s, and Rabin was hardly a disinterested observer. He and Shimon Peres had been bitter Labor Party rivals throughout their careers. Both men were still angling to lead Israel, and Rabin was reluctant to offend needlessly. "O.K.," he finally said, "but this is for later. You'll talk to me first."

I never got the chance. Today, though, with Rabin a martyr and Peres his successor, what was said back then is worth recording. Sitting in his spare Tel Aviv office--his clean desk marred only by an ashtray and the cigarettes he chain-smoked to distraction--Rabin began: "Shimon is in love with an idea, land for peace. Sometimes that's fine. Obviously we wouldn't have peace with Egypt if we hadn't given up the Sinai. But I worry that in seeking a larger peace, Peres, to prove that he's tough, might overreact in a way that's harmful."

As a student of leadership, which he defined as the ability to gain support for policies that people viscerally question, Rabin was fascinated with the idea of toughness, or "its perception," as he astutely put it. "That saying Americans have--that only Nixon could go to China--that's the essence of it," Rabin said, presciently foreshadowing what the world would come to think of his own breakthrough diplomacy with the Arabs. "Sometimes even if a goal is correct, only a certain person can make it happen. Nixon could change on China because he was seen as strong enough to deal with his eyes open. Here," Rabin continued, "perhaps only a military man can have the standing to make peace--and those without that status could compromise too much or use too much muscle because they worry that people think they're weak."

At the time of our conversation, the Likud Party was uninterested in a peace beyond the treaty with Egypt. But Rabin, then Defense Minister in the government of national unity, predicted change "in a decade if not sooner." For its continued existence, he said, Israel needed "the goodwill of friends like the U.S., which requires our being seen as morally in the right." Rabin knew that Israel's repression of the Palestinians during the intifadeh, for which he himself bore considerable responsibility, was causing many to "view us as no different than our enemies." That, he said, could be catastrophic, both "for our soul and for the support we need. Peres, I fear, could someday cause a problem in that regard."

Perhaps in responding to the Hizballah rockets, Rabin would have acted exactly as Peres has. But at a time when Israel's counterstrikes are being criticized as an election ploy designed to portray Peres as tough, the Prime Minister must work overtime to rebut the idea that he is acting only for political gain--even if that perception is grossly unfair. War heroes like Rabin know (or learn) that a measured response is a luxury most easily enjoyed by the strong--or those seen as strong. Incapable of replicating Rabin's exceptional military credentials, Peres should realize that he can derive the same strength from the democratic character of the nation he leads, and that while retaliation is surely justified, in Israel especially nothing good can come from its blunt application. Because, as Rabin said, "real peace here will come only when the Arabs move" from their grudging acceptance of "the fact of our existence" to an appreciation of Israel's "right to exist. Our power can guarantee us as fact probably forever, but who wants to live like that?"