"They deserve to have an entity. Not the PLO, not a state, but a separate entity." Rabin believed that Israel could not agree to the Palestinians' central political demand—recognition of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people and to Yasser Arafat as their leader. To do so, Rabin argued, would require Israelis to compromise on the right of return for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, and that, the defense minister argued, would be "national suicide."
