Itamar Rabinovich

Itamar Rabinovich was born in Jerusalem in 1942. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University in 1963 and then served in the Israel Defense Forces for six years, from 1963 to 1969, reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel in the reserves. During his military service, he also earned a master's degree from Tel Aviv University.[3]

After completing his service, Rabinovich traveled to the United States for doctoral studies and returned to Israel in 1971 with a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern history from the University of California, Los Angeles.[3] His dissertation examined Syria under Ba'ath Party rule following the 1963 coup and formed the basis for his first English-language book on the subject.[6]

Rabinovich joined the faculty of Tel Aviv University in 1971 and remained associated with the institution throughout his career. He advanced through the academic ranks to become a full professor and held the Ettinger Chair of Contemporary Middle Eastern History.[2][3]

His administrative roles included chairmanship of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History, leadership of the Dayan Center and Shiloah Institute, dean of humanities, and rector.[2][7] From 1999 to 2007, he served an eight-year term as Tel Aviv University's sixth president.[6][2] During his presidency, he initiated an economic company to commercialize knowledge developed at the university. Globes described it in 2000 as the first economic company established by an Israeli university; Rabinovich said its purpose was to enable faculty members to pursue entrepreneurial work in cooperation with the university without leaving their academic posts.[8]

Rabinovich is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University and serves as vice chairman of the Institute for National Security Studies.[9][10] Biographical profiles have also listed him as a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center, a Distinguished Global Professor at New York University, and a nonresident Distinguished Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution.[2]

His visiting appointments included Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, Harvard University, and the University of Toronto. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has received honors from Austria and France.[2]

Rabinovich's transition from academia to diplomacy came in the summer of 1992, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin appointed him to head Israel's negotiating team in peace talks with Syria. Rabinovich later said that his years of scholarship on Syria had made the possibility of Israeli-Syrian cooperation particularly compelling to him.[6] The U.S. Department of State records his ambassadorial appointment on February 8, 1993; Eliyahu Ben-Elissar was appointed as his successor in September 1996.[11]

Contemporaneous cables portrayed fundamental disagreements over territory and the meaning of peace. Syria pressed for a commitment to complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, while Israel sought defined obligations concerning normalization and security before resolving the territorial question.[12] On December 15, 1992, Rabinovich reported that Syrian negotiator Mowaffaq Allaf acknowledged that Syria's conception of peace did not include diplomatic relations. After the following day's meeting, Rabinovich described a bleak atmosphere as the Syrians again sought agreement on full withdrawal.[12]

Relations between the delegations were initially distant: Syrian representatives generally declined to shake hands and left the room during breaks, although the atmosphere later thawed. The sides also argued over the 1967 Six-Day War, with Syria describing Israel as the aggressor and the Israeli delegation describing the war as defensive, before agreeing not to continue the dispute.[12]

At the beginning of 1994, Rabin initiated secret contacts with Damascus about a possible agreement. Later that year, negotiations began in Washington between Rabinovich and Syrian ambassador Walid al-Moualem, with U.S. President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher supporting the process.[13] The talks addressed the extent and timetable of an Israeli withdrawal, the relationship between withdrawal stages and normalization, permanent security arrangements, and the status of Israeli settlements in territory that might be returned to Syria. Rabin stated that a treaty involving withdrawal would have to be submitted to an Israeli referendum.[13]

The central episode of Rabinovich's negotiating tenure was the so-called "deposit," a hypothetical and conditional position conveyed through Christopher. On August 3, 1993, Rabin authorized Christopher to ask Syrian President Hafez al-Assad whether Syria would accept a peace treaty and security arrangements if Israel met Syria's territorial demands. Rabinovich recalled telling Dennis Ross that he could "hear the winds of history in the room" and that Rabin had given Christopher "the keys to an Israeli-Syrian peace."[14] Assad gave a qualified yes but sought changes to each Israeli demand. Christopher regarded the response as a possible starting point, while Rabin was more skeptical.[15]

Rabinovich later described Rabin's proposed terms as a phased withdrawal over five years, no evacuation of settlements in the first stage, Syrian normalization intended to demonstrate that Syria was no longer an enemy, and extensive security arrangements to compensate Israel for leaving the Golan Heights.[16] Rabin repeatedly told Christopher to keep the hypothetical proposal in his pocket rather than formally place it on the table.[16]

In Rabinovich's retrospective account, Christopher returned from Damascus after two days reporting that Assad had agreed in principle but objected to each major condition. Rabinovich believed the proposal had been disclosed too directly, after which Rabin abandoned the Syrian track and authorized completion of the Oslo process.[16] The hypothetical willingness to withdraw fully from the Golan, conveyed to the Americans but not committed directly to Syria, remained closely guarded until September 1996.[15]

After Shimon Peres became prime minister following Rabin's assassination in November 1995, he indicated a willingness to prioritize the Syrian track, but Assad did not respond with comparable enthusiasm. The opportunity faded amid terrorist bus bombings in Israel, the growing Israeli-Turkish relationship, and events in Lebanon.[15] Peres broke off the negotiations in early 1996 after suicide bombings in February and March, citing Syria's failure to condemn the attacks.[13]

Ehud Barak resumed the Syrian track in 1999. A U.S.-hosted summit between Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Faruk al-Shara took place in Washington on December 15, followed by talks at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in January 2000. No agreement was reached. On March 26, 2000, President Clinton presented Assad with Barak's latest proposal, which Assad rejected because it would have left Israel sovereign over a strip of territory north of Lake Tiberias, effectively ending the negotiations.[13]

Reflecting on four years of talks, Rabinovich compared the process to buying a carpet in a bazaar, where rule number one is: "Don't seem to be too eager."[17] He also recalled that Allaf eventually invited him to approach the coffee machine during a break and said Assad could not accept less than Egypt's Anwar Sadat had received. Rabinovich replied that if Assad did not want to accept less than Sadat, he should give what Sadat had given.[12]

When the Oslo talks began, Rabinovich was serving as Rabin's negotiator with Syria, a separate and partly competing Arab-Israeli negotiating track. By August 1993, when the Israeli and Palestinian teams had agreed on a declaration of principles and an interim five-year arrangement, he was also Israel's ambassador to the United States.[4]

Rabinovich joined Shimon Peres and Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Holst at Point Mugu Naval Air Station to brief Secretary of State Warren Christopher and seek the Clinton administration's endorsement of the Oslo framework. He subsequently participated in developing the agreement into what became the Oslo process while continuing to manage the separate Syrian track.[4]

After completing his university presidency in 2007, Rabinovich became involved in efforts to strengthen Israel Studies as an academic field. He had worked with the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation for several years before it asked him to become founding president of the Israel Institute. The institute was established in 2012 and formally launched its programs in February 2013 with initial funding from the foundation.[1]

The institute sought to promote the scholarly study of modern Israel through partnerships with universities, research institutions, and cultural organizations. Rabinovich said his own academic focus had expanded from Middle East Studies into Israel Studies and emphasized that the institute did not conduct advocacy or seek to bring political disputes into academic work.[1]

He later became president emeritus and counselor of the Israel Institute.[9] His other public and institutional affiliations have included chairmanship of the Dan David Foundation, vice chairmanship of INSS, and research or fellowship roles at the Dayan Center and Brookings Institution.[10][2]

Rabinovich's bibliography spans more than five decades and reflects the dual concerns of his career: Syrian and Arab politics and the Arab-Israeli peace process. His first book, Syria Under the Ba'ath (1972), grew from his doctoral research on Ba'ath Party rule in Syria.[6][3] It was followed by The War for Lebanon (1984) and The Road Not Taken (1991), the latter of which received the Jewish Book Award in 1991.[3]

The Brink of Peace: The Israeli-Syrian Negotiations (1999) drew directly on his experience as ambassador and chief negotiator from 1992 to 1996.[5] Its description emphasizes his access to Yitzhak Rabin and his detailed knowledge of Syrian history and politics. The book examines the negotiations, the American and Egyptian roles, their implications for the wider Arab-Israeli peace process, and the dispute over whether Rabin and Peres had committed Israel to full withdrawal from the Golan Heights.[5]

Later works included Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs, 1948–2003, The View from Damascus: State, Political Community and Foreign Relations in Modern and Contemporary Syria, and The Lingering Conflict.[2][18] He also co-edited Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present with Jehuda Reinharz.[19]

Rabinovich co-authored Syrian Requiem: The Civil War and Its Aftermath with Carmit Valensi. Discussing the book, he argued that the strong and coherent regional actor built under Hafez Assad no longer existed after the Syrian civil war.[20]

In 2022, Rabinovich published the Hebrew edition of Middle Eastern Maze: Israel, the Arabs, and the Region, 1948–2022 through Maarachot and the Moshe Dayan Center; the Brookings Institution published an English edition in 2023.[18] The 486-page book draws on The Lingering Conflict and Waging Peace, combining his diplomatic experience with his work as a historian of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its eleven chapters span the period from 1948 through the Madrid and Oslo processes, the second intifada, the governments of Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, the Arab Spring, and the Abraham Accords, and conclude with thematic discussions of Arab-Jewish relations and normalization.[18]

Another major later work was Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman, published by Yale University Press in 2017.[21] The political biography spans Rabin's military and political career and examines his relationships with figures including David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, and Shimon Peres.[14] Rabinovich drew on archival and other primary sources, secondary literature, interviews with people who worked closely with Rabin, and transcripts of dozens of Rabin's interviews and speeches.[14]

The book also examines Rabin's interest in an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement and the political developments surrounding his tenure and assassination.[14] Rabinovich said he did not regard the assassination as an isolated event and argued that the preceding political climate and the responses of more than one political camp merited scrutiny.[22] The book won the gold medal and a $25,000 prize in the Washington Institute's 2017 Book Prize competition. The judges noted its use of new documents and four years of personal observation made possible by Rabinovich's service as Rabin's ambassador in Washington.[21]

Rabinovich occupies a distinctive position in Israeli public life as a scholar who also participated directly in the events he later analyzed. His service as Israel's ambassador and Syrian-track negotiator gave him a firsthand perspective on the diplomatic efforts of the 1990s, most directly reflected in The Brink of Peace.[4][5] His academic career at Tel Aviv University extended from his appointment to the faculty in 1971 through service as rector and an eight-year university presidency.[2]

His scholarship repeatedly focused on Syrian politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict, while his work as founding president of the Israel Institute contributed to the institutional development of Israel Studies.[6][1] In 2014, he received the Washington Institute's Scholar-Statesman Award jointly with Michael Oren for contributions to the academic study of the Middle East and the practice of diplomacy.[23]

His membership in the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, together with visiting appointments at universities in the United States and Canada, reflects recognition beyond the Israeli academic world.[2]

Rabinovich has also commented on Israel's relationship with Syria and the wider region. He wrote that Israel conducted serious negotiations with the Assad regimes from 1991 while also confronting Syria and Syrian-supported Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, and that five Israeli prime ministers conveyed hypothetical, conditional willingness to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for a satisfactory peace and security package.[24] His observation that "complexity and ambivalence are inherent in Israel's relationship with its Middle Eastern environment" summarizes a recurring theme in his work.[25]

Rabinovich's retrospective account of the Syrian negotiations forms part of a broader dispute over what Rabin's "deposit" meant and whether Israel had committed itself to full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Rabinovich distinguishes a hypothetical position conveyed to U.S. mediators from a direct commitment to Syria; the issue later became politically contested.[15][5]

His view that Christopher exposed the proposal too directly is also disputed. A later review noted that blaming the American mediation may be unfair because Rabin may not have clearly conveyed his desired timetable or the urgency created by the competing Oslo track and his coalition's political difficulties.[16][14]