The Beilin Legacy

Why are Oslo architects still called upon to provide political commentary? (Great question!)

Hagai Segal
Published: 06.10.09, 12:01
Ynet/Israel Opinion


In a radio interview last week, Yossi Beilin told interviewer Razi Barkai that “all this talk about natural growth is utter nonsense. The settlements are full of empty apartments.”

I heard him speak on my way to an emergency meeting at Channel 7, the settlers’ station and my former place of work. As a result of a severe housing shortage in the Judea and Samaria community of Beit-El, the channel will soon have to bid farewell to two apartments it has been using for 20 years.

The channel’s archives will become – in the framework of natural growth – children’s bedrooms. At this time the archives are home to 50 folders of newscasts from the 1990s and thousand of tapes. The entire great debate from the Oslo Accords era is kept in those folders. Where will we store it now?

Among other things, the archives include recordings of Yossi Beilin, who served as deputy foreign minister during those distant days. These recordings were made during various Knesset discussions, back when Beilin was one of the facilitators of the reconciliation process vis-à-vis Arafat.

It was almost impossible to turn on a radio back in those days without hearing Beilin impassionedly defending the process, while disparaging its critics. In a historical perspective, we are dealing with fascinating and thought-provoking materials, almost like the “things will be alright” speeches delivered by Dayan on the eve of the Yom Kippur War fiasco in 1973.

I informed the channel’s managers that I volunteer to store the archive at my home, yet eventually a more appropriate solution was found. The legacy of Beilin and his colleagues was saved. Future historians will have a great time with it.

However, these future historians will fail to understand how it could be that nine years after Oslo’s collapse, the architects of the process continued to provide political commentary on the radio.