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Israelis rally in Tel Aviv to remember former PM Rabin

Xinhua, November 6, 2016 Adjust font size:

Tens of Thousands of Israelis gathered in the central Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night to mark the 21st anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The event was organized by the center-left Labor Party, to which Rabin was affiliated, after the original annual rally was cancelled due to lack of funding.

According to the organizers, at least 50,000 people participated in the rally.

They chanted calls for peace and for an agreement with the Palestinians that will end the 49-year-long occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

"Enough with the occupation, enough with the incitement, enough with the violence, we want peace!" Zehava Galon, chairwoman of the opposition left-wing Meretz Party, told the rally.

In his speech, Labor Party Chairman Isaac Herzog slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of waging war on democracy.

He said that the same right-wing incitement that led to murder of Rabin still exists.

"Tonight we go out to war for the state. Twenty-one years ago they promised to change, to learn a lesson, to do soul searching," Herzog said, refering to Netanyahu and his Likud Party.

"After 21 years, they are silent again, turning a blind eye again. After 21 years, hatred rears its head, and incitement is here again," he said. "The hatred is the same hatred, the incitement is the same incitement, and the leader is the same leader."

Rabin was a long-time military man who became a politician advocating peace and compromise in his later days.

On Nov. 4, 1995, Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish extremist, shot and killed Rabin during a pro-peace rally in the then-called Malkey Israel Square in central Tel Aviv, which was later named after Rabin.

The murder came after a period of incitement to violence, after Rabin signed the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Authority and the less controversial 1994 peace treaty with Jordan.

The right wing in Israel was angered by Rabin's move, objecting to territorial compromises for peace and viewing him culpable for a raging wave of Palestinian terror attacks on Israel's streets in the mid-90s.

Since then, many Israelis say they have become "disillusioned" with prospects for peace, which seems bleaker than ever as Israelis and Palestinians are mired in a wave of violence that claimed dozens of lives in recent weeks. Endit