Now on the eve of the Memorial Day for Yitzhak Rabin, it’s time to name the guilty parties once and for all.

The account sheet shows that the “Oslo crime” was the massacre in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, and the “Oslo criminals” are the right-wingers who exploited the blood spilled in revenge for the massacre, to spearhead a wave of incitement that led to Rabin’s assassination.

The Rabin government, which came to power in July 1992, brought about a dramatic drop in terror attacks. In 1991, under the Shamir government, 105 people were killed in terror attacks. (This figure includes 75 people who died under various circumstances as a result of rocket attacks against Israel during the Gulf War and were recognized as 'victims of enemy activity.' In my opinion, they were victims of the political tough line of the Israel government toward the Palestinians, like the other victims). In 1992 the number was down to 31 (eight after Rabin’s government took office), and in 1993, before the Oslo Accordss were signed, 26 were killed.

The diplomacy led to a reduction in violence. The same was true in the days after the signing of the accords – up until the 1994 massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

On the eve of the Oslo Accordss, letters were exchanged between Rabin and Yasser Arafat, in which Arafat recognized Israel’s right to live in peace and security, announced the abandonment of the path of terror and the quest for a peaceful solution, alongside his recognition of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

The Oslo Accords created a new situation: The dozens of terror attacks that followed it were perpetrated mainly by Arafat’s opponents from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. PLO people were only involved in a few of the more than 60 terror attacks that took place between the time of the Oslo Accords and the Rabin assassination, and not in any of the mass-casualty attacks that shook the country.

A week after the Oslo Accords were signed on September 13, 1993, a string of attacks began, 22 in all. The wave continued through February 19, 1994. Twenty-nine Israelis were killed in these attacks, 20 in the territories and nine inside Israel.

One attack was carried out by someone from Fatah (the kidnapping and murder of Haim Mizrahi on October 29, 1993), and the rest were committed by people from Islamic Jihad, the Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing and the Popular Front. In five of the attacks, the terrorists’ affiliations were unclear.

This all changed on February 25, 1994, the day of the massacre in the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the most serious nationalist killing since 1967. Was Baruch Goldstein – who entered the site on the Purim holiday and fired indiscriminately at hundreds of Muslim worshippers, killing 29 and wounding more than 100 – motivated by a desire for revenge, or a desire to launch a bloody cycle of revenge?

“Jewish blood” became a means to obtaining funding and construction for the settlements and an influx of troops so the Palestinians would see that “the government is with us” and be afraid. For many years, the “law of action and response” has been operating in the territories, wherein settlers provoke Palestinians, hoping for Palestinian revenge, and then exploit it to seize more land.

But this Pavlovian response to Jewish blood only exists when there is a terror attack in the territories, and never within Israel proper.

And the responses to the massacre were not long in coming. The Rabin government had planned to evacuate part of the Hebron settlement in order to avert revenge attacks but was deterred by a settler propaganda campaign whose slogan was “Hebron now and forever.”

A large number of forces was sent into the territories, and in the month after the massacre many Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded. The massive IDF presence in the territories pushed the Palestinian revenge operations into Israel, while the settlers remained protected.

From late March 1994 until the Rabin assassination on November 4, 1995, 40 terror attacks were committed in response to the massacre: About half took place inside Israel, killing 87 people, 75 of them in seven mass-casualty attacks.

During this same time period, 30 people were killed in the territories, in 23 attacks. In wake of the heightened IDF presence to protect the settlers, residents of Israel were more exposed to Palestinian revenge.

Only one of the 40 terror attacks was perpetrated by a Palestinian policeman – the murder of Jack Atias on July 25, 1994. All the rest were committed by terrorists from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front.

This didn’t stop Netanyahu from blaming Arafat and the Oslo Accords for the attacks. Netanyahu rode the bloody tiger at the Ra’anana Junction with a casket and noose for Rabin, and stood at the head of the demonstration held in Zion Square, and no response to the despicable things on display there was forthcoming from him on the balcony.

The settlers, who were less impacted than the residents of Israel, exploited the terror attacks, and to make the blood boil they coined the phrase “Oslo criminals” and that’s what they labled Rabin and Shimon Peres. The incitement by Netanyahu and the settler right shifted the fight to extreme nationalist lines.

At the same time Yigal Amir and his cohorts, some unknown, were preparing for the assassination. In retrospect, Rabin’s weakness versus the settlers looks like the signing of his own death sentence.

After the assassination, the incitement continued against Peres during the time of the especially brutal terror attacks around the second anniversary of the Hebron massacre – 45 killed on the 18 bus in Jerusalem, and 13 killed in downtown Tel Aviv, all in one week. And the incitement continued until the election, in which the most notable slogan was “Netanyahu is good for the Jews.”

The deception and lies that were at the heart of the right-wing activity against the Oslo Accords became all the more prominent after Netanyahu rose to power. Despite dozens of terror attacks, including some extremely devastating ones – 16 killed and 1,778 wounded in the Mahane Yehuda market on July 30, 1997, and five killed and 181 wounded on Ben-Yehuda Street in Jerusalem on September 4, 1997 – no one was demanding Netanyahu’s ouster.

The right owes Goldstein for the decimation of Oslo, the Rabin assassination and Netanyahu’s rise to power. And the lesson: Any future accords may lead to a bloody cycle of violence by settlers and their supporters.

The activities of the settlers and the right is leading Israel to the edge of the abyss and it must be said once more this year as well – We will not forgive or forget.

The writer is a founder of Shivyon – The Organization for the Prevention of Apartheid in Israel

This article was amedned on November 20, 2016.