Word: rabins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Israel news of the assassination sent thousands to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the wall that Rabin had helped capture as the Israeli army's chief of staff in the Six-Day War of 1967. Scores of mourners brought candles to stand sentinel over both Rabin's private home on Rabbi Ashi street in Tel Aviv and his official residence in Jerusalem. Said one mourner in Jerusalem, pharmacology student Dganit Safrai: "This is the end we can expect for someone who makes peace. He was so strong, it seemed as if nothing could happen...
...Rabin died at the hands of an Arab terrorist, Israelis would have been furiously hurt, yet they would have understood. But for Jewish blood to be spilled by another Jew brought home to the country the dangers of political disagreements that burn so deep. In retrospect, it seemed a short step from strident criticisms made by mainstream rightist parties to the fanaticism of Amir. For months, Rabin's Labor Party had complained that the opposition Likud, psychological compatriot of the extremists in its dislike of the peace plan, was fomenting an atmosphere of violence. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu condemned...
...same time, right-wing extremists had grown increasingly brazen: posters of Rabin in a kaffiyeh, in a Nazi uniform, with blood on his hands, began appearing at rallies protesting the expansion of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank, which had been dictated by the Oslo accords. Ehud Sprinzak, Israel's leading expert on right-wing Jewish violence, says, "A sense of enormous theological and personal desperation within the settlers, greatly intensified by Arab terrorism, finally produced an image of a monster in Rabin." Netanyahu himself did not help matters when he compared Rabin's Labor Party tactics to those...
Amir reportedly told police he had been planning to kill Rabin since at least January. The Prime Minister had been scheduled to go to Yad Vashem that month to visit the sacred memorial to the Holocaust, but when the Islamic Jihad launched a suicide bomb at a bus depot at the Beit Lid Junction in Central Israel, he canceled the visit. Several months later, Amir allegedly planned to assassinate Rabin at a highway dedication in Kfar Shmaryahu, but that time he could not penetrate the Prime Minister's security detail...
...Palestinians committed to the peace process, Rabin's death spells trouble. Palestinian security forces are now in a state of emergency because they fear that the assassination will inspire Palestinian enemies of peace to try to kill Arafat, who declined to attend Rabin's funeral for just that reason. Politically, Arafat had come to trust Rabin, and while Peres is viewed as a softer adversary, the Palestinians fear that he will not be able to rally Israel behind him. Says a senior Palestinian Authority official, "The Israeli politicians are sad now. But after three days you will see them again...