Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin was twice Prime Minister of Israel, signed the Oslo Accords, and was assassinated by an Israeli opposed to them. Born in Jerusalem in 1922 to Labour Zionist parents, he trained as an agricultural engineer and joined the Palmach, the elite strike force of the Haganah, in 1941. He fought in the 1948 war, commanding the Harel Brigade on the Jerusalem corridor, and rose through the army to become chief of staff in 1964. He planned and directed the Six-Day War of June 1967, in which Israel destroyed three air forces on the ground and took Sinai, the Golan, the West Bank and Gaza in six days. He was ambassador to Washington for five years, and became prime minister in 1974 after Golda Meir resigned over the failures of the Yom Kippur War. That term produced the first interim agreement with Egypt and the Entebbe rescue in 1976. He resigned in 1977 over an illegal foreign bank account held by his wife. As defence minister during the first intifada from 1987 he was reported to have ordered troops to break the bones of stone-throwers, and the period damaged him internationally. He returned as prime minister in 1992 and concluded that the demographic and security arithmetic required a negotiated separation. The Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn in September 1993 with Yasser Arafat, established Palestinian self-government in Gaza and Jericho. He shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat and Shimon Peres, and made peace with Jordan the same year. On 4 November 1995, leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv, he was shot by Yigal Amir, a religious nationalist law student.
- Lived: 1922 CE – 1995 CE
- Nationality: Israeli
- Roles: Prime Minister of Israel (1974-1977, 1992-1995)
