Tel Aviv, November 16: Former US president Bill Clinton on Saturday said he believes there would have been a comprehensive peace in the Middle East a decade ago if Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin not been assassinated by Jewish extremist.
“In the last 14 years, not a single week has gone by where I do not think of Yitzhak and miss him terribly,” Clinton said ahead of the opening of a museum and centre in Tel Aviv dedicated to Rabin.
“Nor has a single week gone by when I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East.”
Rabin was shot dead in Tel Aviv square on November 4, 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to a peace deal with the Palestinians.
Clinton’s comments come as the peace process begun by Rabin, Clinton and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lies in tatters amid so far fruitless efforts by US President Barack Obama to get both sides back to the negotiating table.
He urged Israelis and Palestinians to put aside the wrongs of the past for the good of the future, calling on them to learn from the “wisdom” of Rabin’s life.
Rabin earned a Nobel peace prize shared with Arafat and current Israeli President Shimon Peres.
In 2008, Israel’s Chanel 2 gave a television interview of Yigal Amir, the Jewish extremist who assassinated Rabin.
Amir told Channel 10 his act was influenced by the rhetoric of right-wing politicians and generals, including former prime minister Ariel Sharon and former army chief of staff Rafael Eitan, whom he said made it clear the 1993 Oslo agreement “would lead to disaster.”
But Amir did not express any remorse for the killing.
—Agencies