Yitzhak Rabin

I, who have sent armies into fire and soldiers to their death, say today: We sail onto a war which has no casualties, no wounded, no blood nor suffering. It is the only war which is a pleasure to participate in – the war for peace.

We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you in a clear voice: Enough.

Yitzhak Rabin (1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli general, statesman and prime minister, who won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize (together with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat). He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995, by a right-wing Israeli radical opposed to Rabin's signing of the Oslo Accords.

Quotes

• We did not think that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to Sinai on May 14 would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.
  • As quoted in Le Monde (28 February 1968), when he was Chief of General Staff for Israel

• I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won’t happen, and a solution must be found.
  • To a delegation from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Jerusalem, September 1992.

• We are destined to live together, on the same soil in the same land. We, the soldiers who have returned from battle stained with blood, we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes, we who have attended their funerals and cannot look into the eyes of their parents, we who have come from a land where parents bury their children, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians. We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough.
  We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you in a clear voice: Enough.
  • Excerpts of PM Rabin Knesset Speech (21 September 1993)

• One does not make peace with one's friends. One makes peace with one's enemy.

• • On the road to peace, December 1993

• You are not part of the community of Israel... You are not part of the national democratic camp which we all belong to in this house, and many of the people despise you. You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. You are an errant weed. Sensible Judaism spits you out. You placed yourself outside the wall of Jewish law... We say to this horrible man (Baruch Goldstein) and those like him: you are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.
  • [1] (1st March 1994)

• I, serial number 30743, Lieutenant General in reserves Yitzhak Rabin, a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces and in the army of peace, I, who have sent armies into fire and soldiers to their death, say today: We sail onto a war which has no casualties, no wounded, no blood nor suffering. It is the only war which is a pleasure to participate in — the war for peace.
  • Speech to the US Congress (26 July 1994)

• Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.
• Almost all the regimes which did not place Man and the sanctity of Life at the heart of their world view, all those regimes have collapsed and are no more. You can see it for yourselves in our own day.
  • 1994 Nobel Peace Prize lecture (10 December 1994)

• Here we stand before you, men who fate and history have sent on a mission of peace to end once and for all 100 years of bloodshed. Our dream is also your dream -- King Hussein, President Mubarak, Chairman Arafat, all the others, and, above [all], assisting us, President Bill Clinton -- a President who is working in the service of peace. We all love the same children, weep the same tears, hate the same enmity, and pray for reconciliation. Peace has no borders.... My brother Jews speak through the media to you [of] thousands of years of exile. And the dream of generations have returned us to our historic home in the land of Israel -- the land of the Prophets. Etched on every vineyard, every field, every olive tree, every flower is the deep imprint of the Jewish history; of the Book of the books that we have bequeathed to the entire world; of the values of morality and of justice. Every place in the land of the Prophets, every name is an integral part of our heritage of thousands of years of the divine promise to us and to our descendants. Here, is where we were born. Here, is where we created a nation. Here, we forged a haven for the persecuted and built a model of a democratic country. But we are not alone here on this soil, in this land. And so we are sharing this good earth today with the Palestinian people in order to choose life. Starting today, an agreement on paper will be translated into reality on the ground. We are not retreating. We are not leaving. We are building -- and we are doing so for the sake of peace. Our neighbors, the Palestinian people, we who have seen you in your difficulties, we saw you for generations; we who have killed and have been killed are walking beside you now toward a common future, and we want you as a good neighbors. Address at Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement Signing Ceremony, Washington DC (28 September 1995)

• We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
  We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.
  • Ratification of the Israel–Palestinian Interim Agreement Speech in the Knesset (5 October 1995)

• I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.
  • Ratification of the Israel–Palestinian Interim Agreement Speech in the Knesset (5 October 1995)

Quotes about Yitzhak Rabin

• Mr. Rabin, in a precarious political situation at home, seemed unable to put a full stop to all construction in the territories, at least until final borders could be demarcated.
  • Shulamith Hareven Preface, The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)

• We later learned that Rabin had not been killed by a Palestinian after all. Instead he had been shot in the back by an Israeli law student.
  • Son of Hamas Chapter Nine Guns Winter 1995-Spring 1996

External links

• A six-minute interview with David Esing, recorded one month before his assassination
• Eulogies at the Funeral of Prime Minister Rabin at the Jewish Virtual Library
• Yitzhak Rabin Information Page
• "Israel marks Rabin assassination" at BBC News (5 November 2005)
• Booknotes interview with Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof on In the Name of Sorrow and Hope (26 May 1996)
• on The Leon Charney Report on YouTube

• Full Interview on The Leon Charney Report on YouTube