Yitzhak Rabin served as Israeli military Chief of Staff, Ambassador to the United States, Minister of Labor and beginning in 1992, Prime Minister of Israel. He was notable for his efforts toward achieving peace with the Palestinians.
Yitzhak Rabin in 1985, then defense minister (photo credit: David Brauner)
On September 13, 1993, Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles in Washington, D.C., outlining the proposed interim self-government arrangements. The “Gaza-Jericho First” agreement, signed in Cairo on May 4, 1994, addressed the implementation of the first stage of the Declaration of Principles.
Following the progress in the negotiation with the Palestinians, Rabin received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. On October 26, 1994, Rabin and King Hussein signed the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.
September 13, 1993, Washington, D.C. – US President Bill Clinton stands between PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzahk Rabin (Photo credit should read J. DAVID AKE/AFP/Getty Images)
On November 4, 1995, Yitzhak Rabin joined President Shimon Peres at a large peace rally in Tel Aviv’s Kings of Israel square. The rally ended at 9:30 p.m., and as Rabin was leaving, Yigal Amir, a right-wing radical who had helped to organize a number of rallies and protests in the Tel Aviv area against the Oslo Accords that Rabin had signed in 1993 with the Palestinian leader, fired three shots at Rabin’s back with a Beretta 84F .380 ACP caliber semi-automatic pistol. The third shot missed Rabin and slightly wounded a security guard. Amir was immediately subdued by Rabin’s bodyguards and arrested with the murder weapon.
Less than an hour later Rabin was pronounced dead at a Tel Aviv area hospital.
According to “The Economist,” Mr Amir had been stalking Rabin ever since the prime minister shook hands with Yasser Arafat.
Amir, who was later tried and convicted to a life sentence for Rabin’s murder in addition to six more years for injuring one of Rabin’s bodyguards, never voiced any regrets for his actions, which he claims were in accord with Jewish religious law because Rabin had betrayed the Jewish people by making peace with the Palestinians.
Rabin was laid to rest on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Hundreds of world leaders attended the funeral including United States President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Hussein.
A portrait of Rabin at the November 12, 1995, memorial ceremonies in Tel Aviv.Photograph by A. Abbas / Magnum
In an article for “The New Yorker,” Dexter Filkins pointed out:
. . . the killing of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, in 1995, by Yigal Amir, an Israeli extremist, bids to be one of history’s most effective political murders. . . . Within months of Rabin’s death, Benjamin Netanyahu was the new Prime Minister and the prospects for a wider-ranging peace in the Middle East, which had seemed in Rabin’s grasp, were dead, too.”
Filkins added a sad coda to his analysis of the assassination:
Tolstoy posited that history is not made by individuals, that it is, rather, the continuously unfolding consequence of innumerable interconnected events. But, if the story of Yitzhak Rabin and Yigal Amir has anything to teach, it’s that individuals matter. Rabin was the right man at the right time, and so, in his perverse way, was Yigal Amir. The opportunity that Rabin was trying to seize—however small—was there for a moment, and it may never come again.”
The primary source for this post is from an article on Rabin from the excellent resource “Jewish Virtual Library.”
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