Yitzhak Rabin

Origins and early life

Yitzhak Rabin was born at the Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, then under the British Mandate, on 1 March 1922, and grew up in Tel Aviv. The Yitzhak Rabin Center calls him a Sabra, a native-born Israeli Jew: his parents, Nehemiah and Rosa Rabin, were Jewish pioneers of the Third Aliyah, Rosa the daughter of a rabbi, and he held to a secular, national understanding of his Jewish identity. He graduated with distinction from the Kadoorie agricultural school, joined the Palmach, the elite force of the Haganah, and in the war of 1948 commanded the Harel Brigade on the Jerusalem front.

Work and career

He served twenty-seven years in uniform, heading Northern Command and then, from 1964 to 1968, the General Staff, so that he was chief of staff when Israel won the Six-Day War of 1967. He was ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973, and in June 1974 he became the first prime minister born in the country, signing an interim agreement with Egypt in 1975 and ordering the Entebbe rescue of hijacked Air France passengers in 1976.

He was Minister of Defence from 1984 to 1990, won the first nationwide primary of the Labour Party in February 1992 and the general election that June, and in July 1992 became prime minister again. On 13 September 1993 in Washington he signed with Yasser Arafat the Declaration of Principles negotiated in secret in Oslo, and on 26 October 1994 he signed the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan with King Hussein.

Recognition

The 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to him, to his foreign minister Shimon Peres and to the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East. On 4 November 1995 he was assassinated as he left a peace rally in Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv, now Rabin Square, and he was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.