It was one of the political assassinations that most marked recent history.
Jewish ultranationalist Yigal Amir pulled the trigger on Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995 and, with two accurate shots, not only assassinated the man but also the idea he stood for: the possibility that Israelis and Palestinians could have a lasting peace.
Two years earlier, Rabin, then Israeli prime minister, and Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), had shaken hands and even smiled at the signing of the Oslo Accords, which sought to lay the groundwork for Palestinian self-determination.
But while this agreement had awakened the hopes of many Israelis and Palestinians who were beginning to glimpse a small light at the end of the tunnel in the conflict that had confronted them for decades, it also unleashed a wave of violence and hatred among both the Israeli right and the militiamen of the radical Islamist group Hamas.
With fierce opposition against him, led by the right wing of today’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yitzhak Rabin faced an aggressive smear campaign.
Israeli cities, as Globe Live Media editor Melissa Galbraith recalls, were filled with posters showing Rabin dressed as Arafat, with the kufiya (the Palestinian headscarf) on his head, or portrayed as a Nazi, in SS uniform.
The ultra-right did not forgive him for ceding control of part of the Palestinian territories. Hamas, for its part, had already launched a campaign of suicide bombings, convinced that the Oslo Accords were a surrender to a state they considered should not exist.
On that November 4, 1995, 28 years ago this Saturday, Rabin gathered more than 100,000 people in Tel Aviv for a rally in defense of the peace accords.
“I was in the military for 27 years. I fought when peace had no chance. I believe it does now, and a lot of it. We must take advantage of this on behalf of all those who are here present and on behalf of those who are not here, who are many. I always believed that most people want peace and are willing to take risks for peace,” he said that night in what would be his last speech.
The square then sang “Shir LaShalom” (“Song for Peace”). In the inside pocket of the prime minister’s jacket they would later find a copy of the lyrics of this hymn for peace, soaked in his blood.
As soon as Rabin stepped off the stage, Yigal Amin shot him twice in the back.
Rabin, a former army chief who signed peace
Yitzhak Rabin, a member of the Israeli Labor Party, was elected prime minister twice, most recently in the 1992 elections.
But for many Israelis, his best calling card was his service record.
Rabin had started his military career in the Palmaj, the elite unit of the Haganah, which later became, after the proclamation of the State of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
By the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Rabin was already a prominent IDF commander, although this was only the beginning of his military career.
In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Yitzhak Rabin was Chief of Staff of an army that won a stunning victory over its Arab enemies. In less than a week, Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq, and captured the territories of Sinai, the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West Bank.
After this victory, at the height of his military career, Rabin did what many other Israeli generals did: he turned to politics.
He was Israeli ambassador to Washington and upon his return, in 1973, he was elected to the Knesset for the Labor Party. After Golda Meir’s resignation in 1974 (weakened by the Yom Kippur War), he became Prime Minister for the first time (1974-1977), to which he returned in 1992 until his death.
Rabin was chief of staff and led the Israeli army to victory in the Six-Day War in 1967.
For many historians, it was precisely his military past, unimpeachable in Israeli eyes, that gave him the legitimacy necessary to embark on the Oslo peace process.
“It’s not that Rabin was the last chance for peace, but it was the best, precisely because of his experience as a pillar of the defense establishment, the important credibility he had and the genuine transformation he underwent in the last years and months of his life,” Derek Penslar, professor of Jewish history at Harvard University, tells Globe Live Media.
Rabin had led the war, but he became convinced that dialogue was important for Israel’s security, as he passionately demonstrated in speeches such as this one:
“I, serial number 30743, Lieutenant General in reserve Isaac Rabin, soldier of the Israel Defense Forces and the peace army; I, who have sent armies into the fire and soldiers to death, say today: we sail into a war that has no casualties, no wounded, no blood, no suffering. It is the only war in which it is a pleasure to participate: the war for peace.”
As Dov Waxman, director of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at the University of California, explains, Yitzhak Rabin “was not exactly a left-wing pacifist,” but that was why he became the best person in Israel to lead the peace process.
“Prime Minister Rabin was in an exceptional position to lead a successful peace process to its conclusion. Because of his long military experience he could give assurances to Israelis, especially Jewish Israelis, that he would not compromise their security,” Waxman tells Globe Live Media.
Vindicated by this support, and building on the foundations laid by the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and the 1978 Camp David Accords, Rabin became a key player in the Oslo Accords.
What the Oslo Accords were
In an arena as volatile as the Middle East, negotiating a peace required discretion.
For this reason, Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams began secret talks in 1993 in the Norwegian capital, which would end with the signing of the first Oslo Agreement (Oslo I) in September of the same year at the White House.
In front of President Bill Clinton, Rabin and Arafat achieved with a handshake what had seemed impossible until then: to recognize each other as interlocutors.
Both, as well as the then Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
A second agreement (Oslo II) was signed in 1995.
Until then, Israel had refused to negotiate with the PLO, which it considered a terrorist organization. But from that moment on, the Palestine Liberation Organization became, in Israel’s eyes, the “representative of the Palestinian people”.
In turn, the PLO recognized Israel as a state, renounced terrorism and its leaders were able to return from exile.
The Oslo Accords granted limited self-rule to the Palestinians over their urban areas and led to the creation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
But the framework created was to be temporary. Oslo was designed to lead to a permanent solution to the conflict within five years through further negotiations.
Thirty years have passed since then and the reality could not be further from the hopes of that time. Today, hardly anyone talks about peace in the region.
Did Rabin’s assassination mean the end of the peace process?
His assassination had a profound impact on the Oslo peace process, according to the analysts consulted.
After Rabin’s death, Shimon Peres took over as head of the government, which he lost, a year later, in a tight election to Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Although Netanyahu did not stop the peace process, he did everything he could to derail it and to ensure that it did not end with the establishment of a Palestinian state,” argues the University of California professor.
For Orit Rozin, professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, Rabin’s assassination shook Israelis in the same way as it has now with the Hamas attack last October 7, in which some 1,400 people were killed, according to Israeli authorities.
“The circumstances are obviously very different, but then, as now, Israelis and their leaders felt like they had lost their balance,” argues Rozon, for whom Shimon Peres was “too upset to muster the courage to go ahead with the agreement.”
The Israeli ultra-right, although it never acknowledged it, “celebrated Rabin’s assassination,” says the historian, who that night received a call from a rabbi who lived in the settlements, who told her that “people were dancing on the balconies.”
Three weeks before the assassination, a 19-year-old had appeared on television with the emblem of Rabin’s Cadillac-brand car, which he himself had torn off the vehicle: “We got to his car and soon we will get to him too,” he threatened. His name was Itamar Ben Gvir, today Israel’s Minister of National Security.
In the end, summarizes Orit Rozin, “Hamas, with its campaign of suicide bombings, and the Israeli extreme right wing ended up killing the peace process”.
After Rabin’s death, neither on the Palestinian nor on the Israeli side did the necessary leadership emerge to keep the flame of peace alive, analysts say.
It is impossible to know what would have happened if Rabin had not been assassinated.
The negotiators had not yet begun to deal with the most complicated parts of the agreement, such as the future boundaries of the State of Palestine, the return of refugees, the status of Jerusalem or Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.
Rabin himself “never stated publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state either, although he clearly understood that this was where the agreements were heading,” notes Dov Waxman.
Indeed, as historian Rachid Khalidi, who holds the Edward Said Chair in Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, reminds Globe Live Media, “Rabin said on numerous occasions in the Knesset that Palestine would be less than a state, that Israel would retain control of the Jordan River Valley and the whole of Jerusalem.”
Today, the Oslo Accords, which in theory are still in force, are badly discredited. The PNA, which was to have been replaced by an elected government, is losing its legitimacy.
Subsequent attempts to get back on the road to peace have also failed.
The last sincere effort, argues Derek Penslar, was probably in 2008 between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PNA President Mahmoud Abbas.
“Once Netanyahu became prime minister again, it was all over,” opines the Harvard professor.