Leah Rabin Is Buried Next to Husband

Leah Rabin, a passionate campaigner for peace, was buried Wednesday beside her husband, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995 by an extremist Israeli who objected to his peace offers to the Palestinians.

World leaders, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, paid tribute to Leah Rabin, who died Sunday of cancer.

More than 1,500 invited guests attended the simple ceremony in a pine grove at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl Cemetery. The mourners included German President Johannes Rau and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov and U.S. Mideast peace envoy Dennis B. Ross.

Leah Rabin’s daughter, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, pressed a white handkerchief to her face to hold back tears as the simple wooden coffin was lowered into the ground.

In a sign of Leah Rabin’s unique status, she was the first Israeli who did not hold high office to be buried in a plot normally reserved for presidents and prime ministers.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres praised Rabin for taking her husband’s message of Israeli-Arab peace to the world after he was killed.

A videotaped eulogy from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat was broadcast on Israeli television Wednesday. In it, the Palestinian leader tells the Israeli people that he is fully committed to peace.

Though invited, Arafat did not attend the funeral.

Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Peres shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. After Rabin’s death, Arafat made a surprise, unannounced visit to Tel Aviv in 1995 to pay his condolences to Leah Rabin.