Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995) was an Israeli military commander and Labor Party politician whose career bridged Israel's founding-era wars and its first formal peace process with the Palestinians. Born in Jerusalem under the British Mandate, he joined the Palmach as a young man and rose to become Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, leading the IDF during the Six-Day War of June 1967.

After serving as ambassador to the United States, Rabin entered politics with the Labor Party and became prime minister for the first time in 1974, following Golda Meir's resignation in the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. During this term he signed the 1975 Sinai Interim Agreement with Egypt and authorized the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation. He resigned in 1977 over a foreign bank account scandal involving his wife Leah.

Rabin returned as defense minister in the national unity government of the late 1980s, a tenure marked by the harsh IDF response to the First Intifada. He won the 1992 election and became prime minister a second time, partnering with foreign minister Shimon Peres to pursue negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. This produced:

• The Oslo I Accord (Declaration of Principles), signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993 with Yasser Arafat and US President Bill Clinton.
• The Israel–Jordan peace treaty of 26 October 1994 with King Hussein.
• The Oslo II Accord (Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip), signed in Washington on 28 September 1995.

Rabin, Peres, and Arafat shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for the Oslo process. On 4 November 1995, after addressing a peace rally in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square (now Rabin Square), Rabin was shot and killed by Yigal Amir, a religious-nationalist Israeli opposed to the territorial concessions envisioned by Oslo. His assassination is widely regarded as a turning point in Israeli politics and the peace process.