Tens of thousands gather to mourn Yitzhak Rabin

Tens of thousands of Israelis packed the Tel Aviv square where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated 10 years ago to mourn the former prime minister and to express hopes that his memory would spur new efforts to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Rabin’s killing by an ultranationalist Jew opposed to the premier’s peace efforts with the Palestinians stunned the country a decade ago, revealing the depth of Israel’s internal conflicts and badly damaging dreams of peace.

Those at the memorial rally today sang songs of peace, held candles and waved Israeli flags as they remembered Rabin, who won a Noble Peace Prize for signing the Oslo interim peace accords with the Palestinians, as a strong leader who loved his people and made the ultimate sacrifice for peace.

“I loved him very much, and I was in awe of his ability to move from being a soldier to being a peacemaker, a politician to a statesman,” said former US President Bill Clinton, who forged a deep bond with the Israeli leader as he sought to broker Mideast peace.

“If he were here, he would say, ’There is enough of all this missing. If you really think I lived a good life, if you think I made a noble sacrifice in death, than for goodness sakes take up my work and see it through to the end’,” Clinton said.

Clinton ended his speech by saying “Shalom Haver,” Hebrew for “Goodbye friend,” the same words he famously used to bid farewell to Rabin at the Israeli leader’s funeral.

During the memorial, images of Rabin played on a huge television screen towering over the very square where the premier addressed a peace rally a decade ago, minutes before he was killed.

“I stood here with him exactly 10 years ago. I was able to see what he saw, you wonderful people, you young people jumped into that pool there, cheering ’Long live peace, long live Yitzhak.’ He was moved to the depths of his soul by that love and support.” said Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who shared the Nobel Prize with Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

“I’m calling on you, get into political life and with your strength carry the load of peace for the state of Israel,” Peres said. “Peace is in your hands.”

Rabin was shot and killed as he left the peace rally on November 4, 1995 by Yigal Amir, an extremist Jew who considered Rabin a traitor for making concessions to the Palestinians. Since the killing, relations with the Palestinians steeply deteriorated, finally collapsing in a wave of violence that began more than five years ago and left the peace camp in tatters.

Though violence has significantly decreased over the past year, efforts to revive peace talks have faltered.

Amir Peretz, the new leader of Rabin’s Labour Party, said Rabin’s sacrifice had not been in vain.

“The way of Oslo is still alive and well. The way of Oslo is still the path to peace,” he said.

Organisers said 200,000 people attended the rally in the downtown plaza, now named Rabin Square. The gathering was held two days before the anniversar of Rabin’s death on the Jewish calendar.

Security at the rally was tight, with 1,500 police and security personnel deployed out of fear that Palestinians or ultranationalist Jews would make the rally the target of a terror attack, police said. No violent incidents were reported.