Back to Ambassadorial Speeches - Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich

Interview with Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich on National Public Radio December 1, 1993

AMBASSADOR RABINOVICH: What needs to happen by December 13 is reaching an agreement on the implementation of the Gaza/Jericho plan and on that basis a withdraw would begin that should be completed by April 13 so that was to be the case and hopefully will remain the case.

Question: Can there still be an agreement within the next two weeks?

AMB. RABINOVICH: Yes, I think an agreement can be reached within the next two weeks.

Question: What do you think about the general terms of the agreement that Mr. Bachba [Palestinian representative interviewed immediately prior to the Ambassador] described for us which were that the war is over, Palestinian acts of violence against the Israelis were acts of war, and they should be forgiven and forgotten?

AMB. RABINOVICH: I think we deal with this issue more on the pragmatic than on the philosophical level and I think that the hot pursuit operations against be it Hamas or be it Hawks of the Fatah elements are not done retroactively but are done with a view to what is happening now. There is a sustained campaign by both groups and others to derail the peace process and I think that we view Hamas, Fatah Hawks, DFLP, and other like-minded groups not in terms of what they've done in the past, but what they plan to do now.

Question: There is a threat that we've heard issued by Hamas. Not only do they take responsibility for today's killing, as does the DFLP whom you mentioned, but they also threatened more killings -- four more killings is the degree of revenge they mentioned today. What does Israel do about that? I mean, should Israeli forces pursue people into Gaza, risk the kind of confrontations we've seen this past week in order to look for Hamas gunmen?

AMB. RABINOVICH: One of the fundamental elements in the agreement we made with the PLO is that Palestinians will have to assume responsibility for keeping law, order and security around Palestinians, and I think this is the best situation for everybody concerned. But right now we are at the most delicate juncture, namely in the transition from what used to be the situation to what the situation ought to be and therefore, with cool heads, what needs to be done is to prevent this derailing from taking place. In this case, it means that you will try to hunt down those who perpetrated the killing, not so much by way of revenge, but by way of preventing them from proceeding with the other four.

Question: When the agreement was signed, everyone said, "It's going to be very difficult, there are going to be obstacles, but we're going to stick the course." Is what's happened this week what you had in mind when you foresaw difficulties or has it turned out worse than you thought?

AMB. RABINOVICH: No, not worse given the fact that in Palestinian society there are those who are for and in the political system of the Palestinians there are those who are against. Given the sour Syrian reaction and given the sustained campaign from Tehran, what is happening is more or less what we had contemplated when the agreement was discussed and then signed. But we had acted from the outset on the assumption that this is going to work and I believe that this is what is going to be.