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Murdered PM Yitzhak Rabin
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| By israelinsider staff and partners November 5, 2005 |
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Israel on Friday began more than a week of commemorations marking the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with a small candlelight ceremony at his grave attended by friends and relatives of the slain leader.
The anniversary has reopened old wounds and brought about new soul searching in a country that remains deeply divided about Rabin's legacy and the prospects for peace with the Palestinians.
Rabin, who negotiated the historic Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians, was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, after a peace rally in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, an ultranationalist Jew who considered Rabin a traitor.
On Friday, Rabin's family and friends from his Labor Party gathered at his graveside in Jerusalem to light candles, lay wreaths and remember the man who paid with his life for negotiating Israel's first peace agreement with the Palestinians.
"What he started will never be forgotten and we shall continue to act in the same way until we shall achieve the most noble goal of our life, and that is peace among ourselves and our neighbors," said Shimon Peres, Israel's vice premier, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Yasser Arafat for forging the 1993 interim peace accord.
In Tel Aviv, dozens of Israelis flocked to the square where Rabin was gunned down. Many mourners fretted about the divisions in Israeli society and expressed fears of another political killing.
"When he was murdered, I felt like someone who lost his father," said Nachum Lev, who came to pay his respects. "When we see everything that is going on today, the division among our population, I'm afraid we have a lot of work to do in order to prevent such cases in the future."
In the run-up to last month's pullout from the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- a vocal opponent of Rabin at the time of the killing -- was surrounded by heavy security due to widespread threats and incitement against him. The assumption was that any attempt on his life would most likely come from ultranationalist opponents of the pullout.
Friday's evening newscasts were dominated by discussions about Rabin's legacy.
"Time deepens the sense of loss and deepens the significance of the murder. But to say that I'm starting to understand it would be a stretch," Rabin's daughter, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, told Israel TV.
Amir, who is serving a life sentence for the killing, has never expressed remorse and remains something of a hero for an extremist fringe. The anniversary has given new life to long-simmering conspiracy theories among extremists that Amir did not act alone, and perhaps even was assisted by Israeli security personnel.
The Rabin commemorations also have rekindled debate about Rabin's legacy. Some argue that Amir radically changed the course of peacemaking.
Six months after the murder, the dovish Peres lost an election to Likud hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu, who in turn was defeated by Rabin protege Ehud Barak. Neither could drive peace forward, and in late 2000, a new Palestinian uprising erupted. More than 1,000 Israelis and 3,500 Palestinians have since died, though the bloodshed has slowed since a truce declaration last February.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said the Mideast would be a far different place if Rabin was still alive.
"I believe if he would not have been assassinated there would have been a comprehensive peace deal, both Israelis and Palestinians would have been working together," Clinton told Channel Two television. "By this time, we would have been in a different Middle East, more prosperity and less violence."
Others say the peace process would have run aground anyway, because the Oslo deal didn't address contentious issues such as conflicting claims to Jerusalem and the fate of West Bank Jewish settlements. The Palestinians claim the West Bank and Gaza for an independent state, with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Today, Israelis today are less riven over land concessions than in 1995. The Gaza pullout met less resistance than feared, and polls show most Israelis supporting the idea of a Palestinian state.
At the same time, a recent poll found that about a fifth of Israelis think Amir should be pardoned.
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