on security and foreign affairs. Barely three weeks after I joined the government, we had to decide on the most important agreement with the Palestinians since Oslo. Dubbed Oslo II, it involved a major transfer of authority and territory. The process would begin with our pulling out from more than a quarter of the West Bank, including the major Palestinian towns and some 450 smaller towns and villages. After that, there would be three further redeployment phases, at six-month intervals, in so-called “Area C” of the West Bank — a mix of unpopulated land, settlements and a number of points we’d designated as strategically important. Under Oslo, and its parent agreement Camp David, it was all part of ensuring the Palestinians could exercise their “legitimate rights” in the “single territorial entity” of the West Bank and Gaza — in other words, a path to statehood. But only by the time the final three phases of redeployment were complete were we required to begin the “permanent- status” talks on issues like land and borders, Israeli settlements, the future of Jerusalem: the real core of a peace agreement.
By the time I joined the discussions on Oslo I in August 1995, the main points had already been agreed. Rabin was in favor, as were virtually all the cabinet ministers. Whatever scant influence I might exercise would have to come at the decisive cabinet meeting, set for August 13. From the objections I’d raised to the Gaza-Jericho deal as chief of staff, Rabin knew I’d be concerned not only to ensure the security provisions avoided potential misunderstandings on the ground, but about the longer-term implications, especially since the scale of the Israeli withdrawals was much larger this time. In fact, the agreement could be interpreted as requiring us to cede Palestinian control over virtually all of Gaza and West Bank by the end of the third redeployment phase —quite possibly before talks on the permanent-status questions had even begun.
I went to see Rabin a few days before the cabinet vote. I explained why I thought the agreement was flawed. I argued we should either delay some of our redeployments or bring the permanent-status negotiations forward. He listened to me. He barely spoke. He knew I'd be against Oslo II, and knew the reasons why. But we both knew something else: having been brought into government by Rabin, I would be expected, on a vote of this importance, to be in his corner.
The cabinet vote wasn’t happening in a political vacuum. Likud’s defeat in 1992 had meant the end of Yitzhak Shamir’s leadership. The new Likud leader was the former Sayeret Matkal officer with whom I’d shared a newspaper cover in 1986 predicting that he and I would end up facing each other at the ballot box: Bibi Netanyahu. Positioning himself as the fresh young face of Israeli
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