Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin (Hebrew: יִצְחָק רָבִּין) (March 1, 1922 – November 4, 1995) was the fifth prime minister of Israel and the first native-born prime minister of the nation. He was the only prime minister to be assassinated and the second to die in office, following Levi Eshkol (1895-1969).

Rabin was a lifelong public servant, serving in such positions as the Israeli Defense Force chief of staff, ambassador to the United States, a member of the Knesset and two terms as prime minister.

Rabin had the reputation of being a candid leader, direct and at times blunt, with a brilliant analytical mind. During his tenure both the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians and the Treaty of Peace with Jordan were signed. Rabin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, following the signing of the Oslo Accords. The Accords greatly polarized his image in Israeli society, some seeing him as a hero for advancing the cause of peace and some seeing him as a traitor for giving away land they saw as rightfully belonging to Israel.

He was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing activist who had strenuously opposed Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords, while leaving a peace rally on November 4, 1995.

At his funeral, which included four thousand invited dignitaries, Rabin was termed a "martyr for peace," and was eulogized by world leaders, including Arabs, who promised that efforts to end religious and ethnic bloodshed in the Middle East would carry on despite the assassination of the Israeli prime minister.

Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan paid tribute to the man who led Israel's forces in the 1967 Middle East War and then sought a lasting peace with Arabs. "You lived as a soldier, you died as a soldier for peace," the Jordanian leader said. Mubarak called Rabin a "fallen hero for peace."

Rabin's last words to those who were devoted to peace are his legacy. Speaking to those gathered at the peace rally shortly before he was killed, the prime minister said: "The peace is an open door to economic and social progress. The peace is not only in prayer but it is the true desire of the Jewish people. There are enemies to the peace process, and they are trying to hurt us in order to destroy it. I want to say we have found partners in peace among the Palestinians. Without partners to the peace, there is no peace."

A life-long soldier, he died in pursuit of peace.

Childhood, Education, Marriage

Rabin was born in Jerusalem, Israel, which was known at the time as the British Mandate of Palestine, in March 1922.

His father, Nehemiah Rubitzov, born in the Ukraine in 1886, had immigrated to Israel from the United States, and in World War I served as a volunteer in the Jewish Legion.

His mother, Rosa Cohen, was born in White Russia in 1890. She was one of the first members of the Haganah, the mainstream Jewish defense organization. She arrived in Palestine in 1919 as part of the Third Aliya (immigration wave) pioneers.

Nehemiah and Rosa married in 1921. Yitzhak was born the following year in Jerusalem. The family lived briefly in Haifa, then in Tel Aviv where Yitzhak grew up. His sister Rachel was born there in 1925.

Rabin’s parents were volunteer activists for most of their lives and the home had a permanent atmosphere of commitment to public service. Rosa was active in the Haganah defense organization, in Mapai—the Eretz Israel Workers’ Party—and was a Tel Aviv municipal council member. She died of an illness when Rabin was 15 years old. His father had died when he was a young child.

Rabin attended the School for Workers’ Children in Tel Aviv for eight years. This school, which was established in 1924 by the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labor, aimed to instill in the city’s young people a love of the country and, practically, to raise a generation to till the land. Pupils were taught to honor responsibility, sharing and solidarity, and to be actively involved in social issues. Rabin later wrote that this school was his second home, appreciating especially the style of teaching outside of the typical classroom.

Rabin then spent two years at the intermediary regional school of Kibbutz Givat Hashlosha. He then enrolled in the Kadoorie Agricultural School, at the foot of northern Mount Tabor, from which he graduated in 1940 with distinction.

A number of Kadoorie alumni later became commanders in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and leaders of the new state. The school insisted on old world principles of honor, trust and truth.

In 1948, in the midst of the War of Independence, Rabin married Leah Schlossberg. Mrs. Rabin was born in the then-German town of Königsberg (later part of Russia) in 1928. Her family immigrated to Israel immediately following Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

The Rabins had two children, Dalia and Yuval. Dalia Rabin-Pelossof is a lawyer serving in the Knesset (Jewish national assembly), and Yuval, who founded a peace group after his father's assassination, now represents an Israeli firm in the United States.

Mrs. Rabin was known as a staunch supporter of her husband throughout his army and political careers. Following his assassination, she took up the torch for peace, becoming a fierce advocate of his legacy.

The Palmach

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly agreed to implement the Palestine Partition Plan, to set up both a Jewish and an Arab state in modern day Israel, which was then under British mandate.

Dissenting Arabs began attacking the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community) to thwart the establishment of a Jewish state. Jewish settlements and towns were attacked. Poorly armed and ill-equipped, the Jewish defense forces, especially the permanently mobilized arm of the Haganah, the Palmach, fought back as best they could. Six thousand Jews, one percent of the entire Yishuv, fell during the full period of the fight for independence.

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed an independent State of Israel in Tel Aviv. The next day, the regular armies of the surrounding Arab states invaded the new-born state and the full-blown War of Independence began.

At the start of the war, Jerusalem was cut off from the center of the country by enemy positions. Rabin’s first task was to safeguard convoys of food, ammunition and medical supplies to the beleaguered city.

In April 1948, the Palmach Harel Brigade was established with Rabin as commander. The fiercest battles were on the central front, in the corridor leading to Jerusalem, and within the city. Rabin played a major role in all of them.

The first truce was declared in June 1948. Rabin, now chief operations officer on the central front, was also deputy commander to the front’s chief commander, Yigal Allon. Operation Danny—the conquest of Lod, Ramle, Lod Airport and more territory southeast of Tel Aviv—was successfully completed and Allon and Rabin moved on to the southern front, which then became the critical one.

In the late 1970s, Rabin wrote his memoirs in Hebrew, Pinkas Sherut. In them he described this episode of the 1948 war that had troubled him ever since, the forced expulsion by the IDF of 50,000 Arab civilians from the towns of Lod-Ramle. A cabinet committee which checks ministerial memoirs for security leaks ordered that the section be removed and indeed, against Rabin's wishes, it was. The story was revealed by the English translator of the book and published in The New York Times.

For the next few months of 1948, Rabin served as chief operations officer and masterminded a successful campaign that drove the Egyptians and Jordanians from the Negev desert in Operations Yoav, Lot, Assaf, Horev and Uvdah.

The War of Independence came to an end in 1949 with the signing of the armistice agreements. Rabin took part in the Israeli-Egyptian armistice talks in Rhodes. It was his first brush with diplomacy.

Years later Yitzhak Rabin wrote: “Standing now at a crossroads in my personal life, I felt a profound sense of moral responsibility, a kind of debt of honor towards the men whose courage and whose very bodies had blocked the Arabs’ advance. It was to these soldiers that I swore an oath of loyalty...I stayed in the army, and together with my comrades fulfilled my pledge to the heroes of the War of Independence. We built a mighty army.” (The Rabin Memoirs, p. 45)

IDF Commander

Rabin was appointed commander of the Israeli Defense Forces’ first course for battalion commanders and later, head of the general staff’s Operations Division. One of the most important charges of the Operations Division at the beginning of the 1950s was the transit camps, which housed more than 100,000 new immigrants who arrived in Israel in the waves of aliya after independence, many of them from Muslim countries. The camps were hit by severe floods in 1951 and 1952 and the IDF’s help to the immigrants was vital.

Along with his junior officers, Rabin formulated the IDF’s combat doctrine, with special emphasis on the instruction, training standards and principles of the various army units, from the individual level to division level.

In May 1959, Rabin became chief of the Operations Branch, the second highest position in the IDF, under Chief of Staff Chaim Laskov. It was the first time he was faced with tackling the problems of every facet of the defense forces from a strategic position. Four main topics were high on his agenda—building a superior army; ensuring current security; fostering ties with armed forces around the world; and political aspects of the military task.

While chief of the Operations Branch, he had attempted to reduce Israel’s dependence on France—the country's major arms supplier during the 1950s and 1960s—in favor of the United States.

In 1961 Rabin became deputy chief of staff. Three years later he was chief of staff, a position he held from 1964 to 1968. He made great efforts to strengthen the organization, changing the structure; it developed its own military doctrine along with new training and combat methods. New weapons were acquired and top priority was given to the air force and the Armored Corps.

Rabin devoted his first three years as chief of staff to preparing the IDF for all possible contingencies. The Arab states strongly opposed the National Water Carrier Project, a pipeline bringing water from the Sea of Galilee to southern Israel. Syria tried to divert the Jordan River tributaries, but failed because of IDF counter-operations under Rabin’s command.

Under his command, the IDF achieved an overwhelming victory over Egypt, Syria and Jordan in the Six-Day War in 1967. During the buildup to the war Rabin had suffered a nervous breakdown, caused by mounting pressure over his inability to prevent the war, and was incapacitated for 48 hours. His incapacitation was not disclosed to the public, and he resumed full command over the IDF.

The Six-Day War

Tension in the Middle East had been rising steadily since the beginning of the 1960s. Israeli-Syrian border incidents erupted often, initiated by both sides. At the beginning of 1967, clashes increased on the northern border. In one, the Israeli Air Force shot down six Syrian jet fighters that invaded Israel’s air space. Shortly afterward, the Soviet Union gave the Arabs disinformation about Israeli troop formations along the northern border. This implied that Israel intended to launch an all-out attack on Syria. Damascus turned to the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and urged him to start a war with Israel.

In May 1967, President Nasser escalated the tension by massing troops in the Sinai, which contravened the 1957 agreements. He expelled the United Nations forces that since 1957 had been based in Sinai as a buffer between the Egyptian and Israeli armies. Nasser stepped up his war rhetoric, promising to conquer Tel Aviv. Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq signed mutual defense treaties, and Israel again stood alone as the danger of another full-scale Arab attack mounted.

Rabin recommended that the government order a preemptive strike. But the government was still trying to garner international support before resorting to force, especially since the United States had promised to guarantee the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Tiran.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was deemed unsuitable to lead in this national emergency. Under public pressure a national unity government was formed with Moshe Dayan as minister of defense. The new government accepted Rabin’s advice to attack.

On June 5, 1967, virtually all of the air force’s combat planes took to the air in a massive assault on Arab air forces. Taken by surprise, most of the Arabs’ planes were caught on the ground and destroyed. With total air superiority, the Israeli armored and infantry forces had a clear road to invade the Sinai. The Egyptian army was defeated within days and pulled back to the Suez Canal.

The Jordanian army, despite pleas from Israel not to get involved, opened fire in the Jerusalem area, opening another front. Within two days, IDF paratroopers stormed and conquered East Jerusalem, reaching the Western Wall in the Old City. After it was captured by the IDF, Rabin was among the first to visit, delivering a famous speech on the top of Mount Scopus at Hebrew University. Most of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) was invaded and occupied. With the war with Egypt and Jordan settled, the IDF attacked the Syrians on the Golan Heights, removing their threat to the northern Jordan Valley.

In six days, the IDF had fought on three fronts and defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan that had been considered a formidable threat. This achievement, considered one of the greatest in world military history, was reached under the command of Rabin as chief of staff.

The State of Israel had also been transformed. Its territory had more than tripled in size, and it had demonstrated invincible military supremacy over the Arab states. Most of historical Eretz Israel (Land of Israel), including a reunited Jerusalem, had come under Israeli rule. A new stage began in Israel’s political and diplomatic life. The bitter dispute over the country’s borders, which seemed to have ended with the conclusion of the War of Independence, was now reopened.

After the war, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem conferred an honorary doctorate on Rabin.

Ambassador to the United States, Minister in Knesset

Yitzhak Rabin left the IDF at the beginning of 1968, after 27 years of service. He was appointed as ambassador to the United States, a post he held for five years. Cold War rivalry was at its height and Rabin considered Israel’s relationship with the United States of supreme importance to balance strong Soviet Union support for the Arab countries. The two main topics that pre-occupied him during his tenure as ambassador were fostering solid U.S.–Israeli ties, and opening a peace process with Arab states.

During this time U.S. aid to Israel increased dramatically as Washington became Israel’s major supplier of arms and military equipment. Diplomatically, Washington deepened its perception of Israel as its most important and trustworthy ally in the Middle East.

When he returned from Washington, D.C. in 1973, Rabin joined the Labor Party. In the election he won a place as number 20 on Labor’s list for the Eighth Knesset (Parliament). The Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973 with a surprise attack launched jointly by Egypt and Syria.

Rabin did not serve in any official capacity during the war, which produced a vast rupture within Israeli society: all at once, the unflinching faith in the IDF was shattered. As a result, the concept began to take hold that the solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict was to be found in the diplomatic arena, and not necessarily in the military arena.

After the war, the Labor Party won new elections and Rabin was appointed minister of labor in Prime Minister Golda Meir’s government. The Agranat Commission Report and civil protests that spread across the country over Israel’s lack of military preparedness for the Yom Kippur War forced the resignation of Meir. Rabin was elected as head of the Labor Party, and went on to become prime minister.

First term as prime minister, 1974–1977

On June 2, 1974, Rabin was elected Party leader and succeeded Golda Meir as Prime Minister of Israel.

During this first term as prime minister, Rabin conducted stubborn and exhausting negotiations over post-war interim agreements with Egypt and Syria. These talks were mediated by U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger in his famous shuttle diplomacy.

The interim agreement with Egypt was the forerunner of the Middle East peace process that eventually led to the Camp David Accords. While seeking peace with the Arab states, Rabin continued to employ an iron-fisted policy against the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which, in those years, operated as an international terrorist organization that did not hesitate to attack civilians.

Rabin believed in never negotiating with terrorists, especially in hostage situations. However, he had no problem negotiating with an accepted national leader such as King Hussein of Jordan, with whom he eventually formed a deep friendship. Rabin accepted territorial compromise on the West Bank in exchange for peace.

Israel’s refusal to capitulate to terrorism was dramatically demonstrated in the world-famed Entebbe Operation when the IDF’s long arm reached deep into Uganda to rescue hostages hijacked by the PLO.

Rabin resigned from office after two crises hit him: the arrival of four F-15 fighter jets on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) led to the breaking up of his coalition; and the exposure of a U.S. Dollar bank account held by his wife, Leah Rabin, an act forbidden at that time by Israeli currency regulators. Rabin took responsibility for his wife's account and resigned from office. He was later hailed by many commentators for his resignation, who said this reflected his character of integrity and responsibility.

From 1977 to 1984, Rabin was in the background, serving as a regular Knesset member. During this period he devoted a great deal of time to his family, and to writing essays on current affairs, politics and strategy.

Minister of Defense

In 1984 a national unity government was agreed upon and Rabin was appointed minister of defense under the governments of Yitzhak Shimar and Shimon Peres. He held the post for six years, until the collapse of the second national unity government in 1990. One of his major tasks was to disengage the IDF from a war of attrition in Lebanon, where it had become stuck since the 1982 invasion—the Shalom Hagalil Operation (Peace for the Galilee). Rabin and Shimon Peres, who was prime minister from 1984-1986, made a successful staged withdrawal from Lebanon except for the narrow Security Zone they established on its southern border.

At the end of 1987 The First Intifada (uprising) erupted. The Palestinian popular uprising in the occupied territories caught Israel by surprise and rapidly escalated to alarming proportions. As the Intifada attracted huge international interest, Israel’s military and political leaders were slow to comprehend its magnitude and significance.

Initially expected to be short-lived, the uprising soon took on a life of its own. Rabin initially adopted an iron-fist policy to suppress the uprising and he told the IDF to respond to Palestinian assaults "with determination."

When King Hussein unexpectedly announced that Jordan was relinquishing its sovereignty over the West Bank which had been Israeli-occupied since the Six-Day War, Rabin concluded that only the Palestinians could be the real partners in any settlement. He began to look for credible channels of communication with them. His attitude gradually shifted as he became more convinced that the solution to the violence should be found around the negotiation table.

After the elections of 1988, a second national unity government was formed, and Rabin continued as minister of defense. In early 1989 he presented his plan for negotiations with the Palestinians, which became in time the foundation for the Madrid International Peace Conference and the start of the peace process. The main thrust of the plan was to foster a credible local Palestinian leadership separate from the PLO by calling for elections in the territories. Following an attempt by the Labor Party to topple the government in 1990, the national unity government collapsed. The Labor Party, including Rabin, returned to the opposition benches.

From 1990 to 1992 Rabin was a Knesset member and a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee again. This time he used the opposition years to battle for the leadership of his party that Shimon Peres held since 1977.

Second term as prime minister, 1992–1995

Rabin with Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat during the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993

After its repeated failure to regain power, the Labor Party put Rabin at the helm again. It had been 15 years since his previous term as the leader of Labor. In the 1992 election campaign, Rabin swept up mass support and was elected prime minister. He established a coalition government with Meretz (liberal-left), and with Shas (a Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox, but somewhat dovish party). Once in office, he immediately moved a peace agreement with the Palestinians to the top of his list of priorities, as well as the shift of socioeconomic priorities. In his view, Israel’s economic future necessitated an end of the state of war, and the diversion of resources from the settlements to education and to absorption of the major wave of immigration that was arriving from the former Soviet Union.

Rabin and Peres finally ended their feuding and came together to cooperate fully in the peace process. Rabin’s reluctant journey to accepting the PLO as a partner for peace was a prolonged and painful process. He finally realized that it is with an enemy one negotiates peace, and Israel had no other partner for an agreement except the PLO.

As part of his transformation, Rabin made a distinction between Palestinian extremists and fundamentalists, and the moderates in the PLO. Despite his reservations about the trustworthiness of Yasser Arafat, and the seriousness of PLO intentions, Rabin agreed to clandestine negotiations with PLO representatives. These talks, which were held in the spring and summer of 1993 in Oslo, conceived the Declaration of Principles (Oslo-A Agreement) that was signed in September 1993. It guaranteed Palestinians self-rule in the territories for a period of five years. In the first phase, Israel would pull out of the Gaza Strip and Jericho, and subsequently would also withdraw from territories in the West Bank, and the Palestinians would hold elections.

Following the signing of the Declaration of Principles, extremists opposed to the peace process began a campaign of terrorist attacks. Rabin vowed to pursue the peace process as if there was no terrorism while fighting terrorism as if there was no peace process.

On May 4, 1994, Rabin signed The Gaza-Jericho Agreement, which enabled the implementation of the first stage of the Declaration of Principles, or in other words, the establishment of Palestinian autonomy in Gaza and Jericho. The IDF withdrew from most of the Gaza Strip, but continued to defend the Jewish settlements in the region. On September 28, 1995, Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo B Agreement, which expanded West Bank areas under control of the new Palestinian Authority.

Advancement of the peace process with the Palestinians made possible a diplomatic breakthrough that led to the onset of peace talks between Israel and Jordan. Following several months of negotiations, a full peace treaty between Israel and Jordan was signed in October 1994. About two months later, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to Rabin, Peres, and Arafat.

Israel meanwhile continued intensive diplomatic efforts to begin direct negotiations with Syria. Rabin said he was prepared to exchange territory for a peace agreement with Syria, if the accord was acceptable to the Israeli public. He promised a referendum before any withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

His peace policy received broad support from the people of Israel, but it enraged many sectors who opposed compromise with the PLO and territorial concessions. These included Jewish settlers in the West Bank, Gaza and to a lesser extent in the Golan, the religious extreme right, and many Likud Party members.

On the other side, Hamas and Islamic Jihad were more vehemently opposed to the Oslo Agreements and peace process. A series of bomb outrages only increased the frustration, bitterness, and anger of Israelis who considered the peace process a failure.

On the night of Saturday, November 4, 1995, Rabin traveled to the Kings’ Square in Tel Aviv where tens of thousands of Israeli peace supporters massed to assure him of their enthusiastic support. They rallied with wild enthusiasm under banners that proclaimed “Yes to Peace – No to Violence.” Later that night he was killed by Yigal Amir, a radical who was opposed to the peace process.

Assassination and Legacy

Yitzhak and Leah Rabin's grave on Mount Herzl

The monument at the site of the assassination: Ibn Gevirol Street between the Tel Aviv City Hall and Gan Ha'ir (in the back)

Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Israeli radical who had strenuously opposed Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords, after attending a rally promoting the Accords at Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square (which was renamed “Yitzhak Rabin Square” after his death). Rabin died of massive blood loss and a punctured lung on the operating table at the nearby Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.

The assassination was a shock for most of the Israeli public, which held rallies and memorials near the site of the assassination, his home, the Knesset, and the home of the assassin. Rabin's funeral was attended by many world leaders, among them U.S. president Bill Clinton, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and King Hussein of Jordan.

At Rabin’s funeral, Hussein said:

He was a man of courage, a man of vision, and he was endowed with one of the greatest virtues that any man can have. He was endowed with humility. He felt with those around him, and in a position of responsibility, he placed himself, as I do and have done, often, in the place of the other partner to achieve a worthy goal. And we achieved peace, an honorable peace and a lasting peace. He had courage, he had vision, and he had a commitment to peace, and standing here, I commit before you, before my people in Jordan, before the world, myself to continue with our utmost, to ensure that we leave a similar legacy. And when my time comes, I hope it will be like my grandfather's and like Yitzhak Rabin's.

A national memorial day for Rabin is set on his death date, and the square in which he was assassinated was named after him, as well as many streets and public institutions.

Today, Rabin is remembered by most as Israel's great man of peace, despite his military career. After his untimely death, Rabin was turned into a national symbol, especially for the Israeli left. There is some disagreement on the relation between his untimely death and the ensuing halt to the peace process and rise of the Israeli right.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Dromi, Uri. "Still craving peace 10 years after Rabin." New Straits Times, Nov. 5, 2005. p. 20.
• "Israel marks Rabin assassination." BBC, Nov. 4, 2005.
• Horovitz, David (ed.). Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier of Peace. London: Peter Halban Publishers, 1996. ISBN 1870015622

Further reading

• Benedikt, Linda. Yitzhak Rabin: The Battle for Peace. London: Haus Pub, 2006. ISBN 190495006X
• Horovitz, David (ed.). Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin. New York: NewMarket Press, 1996. ISBN 155704287X
• Kurzman, Dan. Soldier of Peace: The Life of Yitzhak Rabin. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998. ISBN 0060186844
• Rabin, Yitzhak. The Rabin Memoirs. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 0520207661

External links

• Memorial biography
• Official government biography
• The Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies
• Yitzhak Rabin Web Page
• Yitzhak Rabin profile, ynet news lexicon
• One of the last recorded interviews with Yitzhak Rabin — a 6-minute recorded interview with David Esing, one month before the assassination.

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