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narrowed. It wasn’t until the next morning that the final result was clear: Bibi Netanyahu had won. By 29,000 votes. If a mere 15,000 of the three million ballots cast had gone in our column instead of his, Shimon Peres would have remained Prime Minister.
I knew he’d be feeling crushed. Not just on a personal level, because this latest electoral defeat had been in was a direct, head-to-head vote for Prime Minister. He, like all of us who had campaigned for him, knew what was at stake for the country. It had been barely six months since Rabin was gunned down in Tel Aviv’s main square, by a fellow Israeli riding a tide of hatred so blinkered that it could paint Yitzhak — who had worked all his life to create, defend and help develop the Jewish state — as a traitor, even a Nazi. All because he had decided to try to make peace with the Palestinians, at the price of ceding control of part of the biblical land of Israel. Bibi had gone through the motions of urging restraint. But politically, he had ridden their wave. It was hard not to see his victory over Peres as a triumph for the ugly intolerance and the venom that had claimed Yitzhak’s life. In policy terms, it was in large part a rejection of both men’s vision of an Israel that, while still ready to fight if necessary, could explore compromise in the search for the ultimate prize of peace. The last time Yitzhak and I had talked, he’d been confident of defeating Bibi at the polls, and I do believe he would have won. But despite his differences with Peres, I’m equally certain he would have wanted Shimon to win, not just for his sake but for Israel’s.
I had got to know Shimon, too, during my years in the Airya. In fact, he was the Labor leader who first spoke to me openly about one day moving into politics, something Yitzhak was always punctilious in not broaching before I’d left the army. Shimon had also taken to including me — usually along with Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben-Ami, a bright young historian who would become our ambassador to Spain before entering politics himself — in a coterie of “youngsters” he would bring along to meet visiting dignitaries from abroad. He occasionally invited me to chat about military and security issues in his and Sonya’s flat in Ramat Aviv. My personal ties to Rabin were stronger, of course. After I joined the government, Shimon’s and my relationship became slightly more circumspect. But since the assassination, some of the old warmth had returned. Not just as his foreign minister, but in discussions on wider questions of security as well, we worked closely together.
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