The Gatekeepers Page #5

---

never on any list of suspects.

He gets up one morning and

shoots the Prime Minister.

Around

July-August 1995,

I started to feel that we

were faced with an increase

in the potential for the

assassination of the Prime Minister.

Rabin's a traitor!

Rabin's a traitor!

We're fighting

against a government

that's leading

us into a chasm!

The Right's activity

in Israel was no secret.

You don't need the head

of the Shin Bet to explain

what Bibi Netanyahu

or Arik Sharon said

to the demonstrators

in Jerusalem.

You don't need the head

of the Shin Bet to explain

to the Israeli public and

especially the Prime Minister

the significance of Rabin's

coffin at a mock funeral.

With blood and fire,

we'll throw Rabin out!

Things started

heating up more and more.

There was an attempted attack

at the Wingate Institute.

After that, I went

over to him and said,

"Listen, Yitzhak, it

doesn't work like that.

"They'll hurt you in the end.

"I'm asking you to start

wearing a bulletproof vest

"and to drive in

the armored car.

"We'll increase

your security detail. "

He slammed me down.

"I was a soldier

before the State.

"I won't wear

a bulletproof vest. "

Did you speak to the

rabbis and the settlers' leaders?

Yes. I met with rabbis. I met

with the leaders of the settlers.

We spoke about incitement

and insurrection.

The government has no right

to force people to do

anything that runs counter

to the Torah and Jewish Law.

All Of you here,

by your presence

at this gathering,

prove

that the people

really do want peace

and oppose violence.

I went to Paris on

Thursday, maybe Wednesday,

on an assignment that was

forced on me by Rabin.

I got a call from

my bureau chief,

who told me that

Rabin was wounded.

I was in shock, of course, but

I was surrounded by people,

so I had to function.

On a personal level, until I sat

on the plane in the dark at night,

on the flight to Tel Aviv,

I think it was the first time

that I started to feel in my

heart what I knew in my head.

Thank God for

those four hours

because it gave me

a chance to absorb the loss

of a man who really

was extraordinary.

"I'm ashamed. "

In retrospect, I can say that

it changed my whole world.

I suddenly saw

a different Israel.

I wasn't aware of the intensity

of the chasms and hatred,

of the rifts that

exist between us.

How do we see our future?

What do we have in common?

Why did we come here?

What do we want to become?

All that was self-evident,

and it all fell apart.

PERY. Rabin's assassination

shattered all hope.

It showed very clearly

that some punk of an assassin,

with a pistol that

could barely shoot,

could eliminate hope,

an entire peace process.

He could change everything.

First of all, I decided,

after consulting with my wife,

that I would take

ministerial responsibility,

and submit my resignation.

I did that immediately.

What does

she tell you?

She... tries to keep me alive.

It was a very

difficult period.

Yigal Amir succeeded.

He changed history.

He changed history.

He succeeded big time.

Until today.

Until today.

On the contrary,

it's only getting worse.

I believe that we'll see another

political assassination

surrounding the withdrawal

from the West Bank.

It will come from every direction,

mainly from the rabbis,

because the rabbis have

no reason to learn any lesson.

As far as the extremist rabbis are

concerned, the system proved itself.

Rabin's assassination

brought me to the Shin Bet.

A year earlier,

I turned Rabin down,

when he asked me to be

head of the Shin Bet.

After Yitzhak Rabin's assassination,

I realized I had no choice.

It was obvious the Shin Bet

faced a serious crisis

and everyone in

the Shin Bet knew it.

Everything about the Shin

Bet's operations collapsed.

Security surrounding the

Prime Minister collapsed.

The intelligence that should have

prevented the assassination collapsed.

The Shin Bet's strong suit,

preventing Palestinian

and Islamic terror,

could no longer

provide the goods.

The organization was

down for the count.

The Shin Bet needed new tools

and they had to be developed.

We also realized that

we were relying on force,

rather than our brains.

We began to implement

an organizational shift,

from field operations

to people sitting in offices

in front of their

computer monitors.

We prevented more

attacks each year.

We achieved greater

security every year.

How did it happen?

It had a lot to do with changes

we made in the Shin Bet,

but the truth must be told.

The more significant

achievement

was cooperation between

us and the Palestinians.

I met with all the top

Palestinian security officials,

all of them, once a month,

to coordinate intelligence.

They always told me,

"We're not your agents.

"We don't put Hamas members

in prison for your sake.

"We only do it because

our people believe that,

"at the end of the day, we'll

have a state beside Israel.

"When we no longer believe

that, forget about us. "

Just as there was a strong

desire, a firm decision

and real intent by Peres and

Rabin to reach an agreement

after Rabin was gone,

the desire,

or Israel's intent to reach

a real agreement dwindled,

to put it mildly.

There was

no good faith.

There was no good faith

from the Palestinian side

and not from the Israeli side.

We wanted security

and got more terrorism.

They wanted a state

and got more settlements.

When we started the Oslo

process in 1993-1994,

100,000 settlers lived in

the West Bank and Gaza,

not including the new

Jerusalem suburbs.

At the end of the process,

6-7 years later,

in the summer of 2000,

when the process collapsed,

there were over

220,000 settlers.

Ehud Barak is very proud

to have built more settlements

than Bibi Netanyahu

or any other Prime

Minister before him.

So the question isn't

whether there's a partner.

Arafat doesn't have a partner.

Barak doesn't have a partner.

The question is what both

sides do to have a partner.

It was obvious we were heading

toward another Intifada,

another round of violence by

a group, a society, a nation

that felt that it

had nothing to lose.

In 2002,

I went to London.

The Intifada was raging. It was

hell and we went to London,

a group of Israelis and a

group of Palestinians,

in order to see if

we could do anything.

At some point, I was making

myself a cup of coffee

and I was approached by a

Palestinian acquaintance

named wad Satay,

a Doctor of Psychiatry.

He said, "Ami, we

finally defeated you. "

I said to him, "Are you mad?

What do you mean, defeated us?

"Hundreds of you

are getting killed.

"At this rate thousands

of you will get killed.

"You're about to lose whatever

tiny bit of a state you have

"and you'll lose your dream of statehood.

What kind of victory is that?"

He said to me, "Ami, I

don't understand you.

"You still don't

understand us.

"For us, victory is

seeing you suffer.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes