At Rabin Service, Barak Urges Rededication to Peace Process

Shaken and subdued by their country’s sudden slide into violence, tens of thousands of pro-peace Israelis marked the fifth anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination with an open-air memorial Saturday that turned into a political rally for the process of reconciliation he began seven years ago.

The crowd--predominantly from Israel’s secular political left, which formed the heart of Rabin’s following--carried placards urging peace, listened to ballads of hope and heard national leaders pledge to press ahead in the search for a political settlement despite the fighting that has swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the past five weeks.

“We won’t let despair overwhelm our hope,” Prime Minister Ehud Barak told the gathering. “It is not enough to want peace, to talk about peace, to dream about peace. We have to achieve it.”

In an emotional speech, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres said there is no alternative for Israel but to continue the process of negotiation with the Palestinians that began seven years ago in Oslo and that he and Rabin both embraced.

“The Oslo process is not dead,” Peres said. “It won’t die.”

Barak told the crowd that he will go to Washington later this week to meet with President Clinton in yet another attempt to achieve a political settlement that could bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians and end the bloodshed. He issued a public plea to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to avoid the influence of extremists.

“I call out to you from here to extend your hand in peace,” he said.

Arafat is scheduled to meet with Clinton on Thursday at the White House for talks aimed at ending the crisis.

Saturday’s commemorative ceremony, which began in a restrained, reflective atmosphere, concluded as a kind of subdued pep rally for supporters of the peace process, who have been badly demoralized by the recent failure of negotiations and subsequent violence.

There were more clashes Saturday between Israeli security units and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although the violence remained below the levels of midweek. In the West Bank city of Hebron, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl was struck in the head by a bullet as she was walking home from school.

The shooting occurred as groups of Palestinian youths hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers near a checkpoint in Hebron. An Israeli Defense Forces spokeswoman claimed that the bullet was not fired from the Israeli side.

On Saturday evening, there were reports that Israeli forces had exchanged gunfire with Palestinians in several West Bank areas but that there had been no serious casualties.

Although the rhetoric from Barak and Peres seemed to lift the spirits of those attending the commemoration in Tel Aviv, the depth of the country’s crisis seemed to magnify the sense of loss, especially among young people. As they have in the past, many of the young attendees carried candles imprinted with Rabin’s likeness--a tradition that has given them the name “candle children.”

The late premier’s strong appeal to younger, liberal-minded Israelis is similar to the emotional attachment young Americans of the mid-1960s had to slain President Kennedy as the United States descended into years of social unrest at home and a distant war abroad.

“We need him very much,” said Maude Klochendler, 16, a student in Tel Aviv. “Today, more than ever, he is a symbol of what might have been. The assassin was so right: When he killed Rabin, he killed the peace process.”

One newspaper commentary argued that in the years since his death, Rabin has taken on the role of grandfather for Israel’s candle children. It noted that they are the first generation in modern Israel that has had the privilege of knowing their grandparents “alive, up to date, young, speaking their language.”

In previous years, the anniversary of Rabin’s death at the hands of a right-wing Israeli extremist in Tel Aviv rekindled a debate over the central issue that has divided society here for decades: whether to seek peace with the country’s Arab neighbors or try to wall them out.

But with Israel today beset by crisis and led by an unpopular government seemingly uncertain how to deal with a new and virulent Palestinian uprising, Saturday’s ceremony came at a time of national soul-searching over the nation’s direction, its destiny and its leaders.

“Gradually, the memorial days for Rabin are becoming ‘the days of awe’ on which many Israelis mourn the corruption of the Israeli character and its breakup, the inability of Israeli society to deal properly with the frantic changes it is undergoing,” said the center-left daily Haaretz.

With many Israelis unsettled and increasingly worried about the direction of events, the impact of Rabin’s violent death has only grown.

Rabin’s death created “an absence that assumes a life of its own,” commentator Doron Rosenblum wrote in the same paper.

But with the perspective of five years, Rabin’s place in Israel’s history has become a subject of intellectual debate here for the first time. Some have compared him to another assassinated American president, Abraham Lincoln--also killed by an extremist because of his belief in reconciliation.

“This year we’re influenced by the state of the country but also because it is the fifth anniversary,” said Anita Shapira, a professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University. “People are starting to look for historical perspective. But more than anything, he will be remembered as the Israeli prime minister who was murdered for his ideas. That is something time will not change.”