Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Glossaries
- Chronology
- Preface to the second edition: Towards 2020
- Introduction
- 1 Zionism and security
- 2 The Hebrew Republic
- 3 New immigrants and first elections
- 4 The politics of piety
- 5 Retaliation or self-restraint
- 6 The Rise of The Right
- 7 The Road to Beirut
- 8 Dissent at Home and Abroad
- 9 An insurrection before a handshake
- 10 The end of ideology?
- 11 The Killing of a Prime Minister
- 12 The Magician and the Bulldozer
- 13 ‘He does not stop at the red light’
- 14 An unlikely grandfather
- 15 A Brotherly Conflict
- 16 Bialik's bequest?
- 17 Stagnation and Isolationism
- 18 An Arab Spring and an Israeli winter?
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
10 - The end of ideology?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Glossaries
- Chronology
- Preface to the second edition: Towards 2020
- Introduction
- 1 Zionism and security
- 2 The Hebrew Republic
- 3 New immigrants and first elections
- 4 The politics of piety
- 5 Retaliation or self-restraint
- 6 The Rise of The Right
- 7 The Road to Beirut
- 8 Dissent at Home and Abroad
- 9 An insurrection before a handshake
- 10 The end of ideology?
- 11 The Killing of a Prime Minister
- 12 The Magician and the Bulldozer
- 13 ‘He does not stop at the red light’
- 14 An unlikely grandfather
- 15 A Brotherly Conflict
- 16 Bialik's bequest?
- 17 Stagnation and Isolationism
- 18 An Arab Spring and an Israeli winter?
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
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:
No longer are we necessarily ‘a people that dwells alone’ and no longer is it true that ‘the whole world is against us’. We must overcome the sense of isolation that has held us in its thrall for almost half a century. We must join the international movement towards peace, reconciliation and cooperation that is spreading all over the entire globe these days – lest we be the last to remain, all alone in the station.
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.
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- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Modern Israel , pp. 227 - 243Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013