Lea Rabin Discusses Husband Yitzhak’s Dream–Day of Peace

Lea Rabin Discusses Husband Yitzhak’s Dream–Day of Peace

BY DAVID KAPLAN
Rice News Staff
June 25, 1998

Lea Rabin, widow of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, said during
her visit to Rice that she believes the Middle East will see "the day of
peace" that her husband worked tirelessly for until he was assassinated
by an Israeli extremist in 1997.

She spoke at the dedication of the Yitzhak Rabin Fellow in Peace and Security
in honor of Yitzhak Rabin at Rice’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public
Policy in late May. The endowed research position will be held by Uri Sagie,
a former major general in the Israeli military and director of military intelligence.

Since her husband’s death, Lea Rabin said the Middle East peace process has
been "stuck somewhere in the middle of the road" and that the foundation
of the peace process is today mired down in disrespect, misbelief and suspicion
on the part of Arabs and Israelis.

"At the same time, wherever the train of peace is stuck, and it is stuck,
I know it will take over, start all over again and one day will arrive, and
we shall hear this train whistle and we shall hear the wheels start turning
in one direction–the direction of the final station … of peace," she
said.

Yitzhak Rabin was instrumental in the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt
and in the 1993 Oslo peace accord, which was sealed by his handshake with Palestinian
leader Yasir Arafat.

"Yitzhak Rabin never, never tired of dreaming of peace and working and
toiling and indulging in the process of peace," Lea Rabin said.

Her husband believed that Jewish settlements along the West Bank should be
returned to the Palestinians for the sake of peace, she said. Today, the return
of the settlements, which Lea Rabin said Israel does not need, is a major stumbling
block in the peace process.

She said that her husband was so sure that his way of negotiating land for
peace was the right way that he would not even look at posters and signs hung
all over Israel that said Yitzhak Rabin was a traitor and a killer of Zionists.

Just two days before his murder, Lea Rabin said that her husband was asked
if he believed a Jew would murder him.

"He was so innocent in really trusting that it couldn’t happen to him,
that it would happen that a Jew might murder him," she said. "It was
a political murder and rarely has a political murder changed the course of history
as this political murder has."

For related information visit the following Web site:
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy: http://riceinfo.rice.edu/projects/baker/index.html