1977 – In the Opposition
In the Knesset elections held on May 17, the Labor Party lost its power, and for the first time the Likud led by Menachem Begin, put together a government. The Labor Party moved to the Opposition. As a member of Knesset, Rabin enthusiastically accompanied Sadat’s visit to Israel. Despite his reservations regarding clauses related to taking down the settlements in Sinai, he supported the peace agreement with Egypt in the Knesset.
In 1979, he published his book, “The Rabin Memoirs,” in which he summarized his military path, and he laid out his accounts with his political opponents, particularly with Shimon Peres. In his little office in the Kirya in Tel Aviv, allocated for his use as a former prime minister, he spent much time writing to newspapers, meeting with old friends, and breathing life into the camp of his supporters in the party.
For the elections held in 1981, in the Labor Party, he supported Yigal Allon as the party candidate for prime minister. Yet following Allon’s sudden death in February 1980, he announced his candidacy. Peres was nominated by the party, but the Likud won the elections.
On June 6, 1982, Operation Peace for Galilee, the First Lebanon War, began, to protect the towns and residential settlements in the north. Rabin supported the early stages, but as the war went on and its goals were extended, he warned of the sunset of the IDF in the Lebanese mud, and he demanded the withdrawal of the military forces to a security strip from which they could defend the northern border of Israel.
“Opposition is a very important institution in a democratic state, and certainly in ours. If you don’t have a choice, you have to sit in the Opposition and do the work.”
