Yizhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin 1 March 1922 4 November 1995 was an Israeli statesman and general He was the prime minister of Israel serving two terms in office 19741977 and from 1992 until his assassination in 1995 He was the first prime minister to have been born in Mandatory PalestineRabin was born in Jerusalem to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and was raised in a Labor Zionist household He learned agriculture in school and excelled as a student As a teenager he joined the Palmach the commando force of the Yishuv He eventually rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during the 1948 ArabIsraeli War In late 1948 he joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces and continued to rise as a promising officer with a 27year career as a professional soldier He ultimately attained the rank of Rav Aluf the most senior rank in the Israeli Defense Force often translated as lieutenant general In the 1950s Rabin helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF and he led its Operations Directorate from 1959 to 1963 He was appointed chief of the general staff in 1964 and oversaw Israels victory in the 1967 SixDay WarRabin served as Israels ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973 during a period of deepening USIsrael ties He was appointed Prime Minister of Israel in 1974 after the resignation of Golda Meir In his first term Rabin signed the Sinai Interim Agreement and ordered the Entebbe raid He resigned in 1977 in the wake of a financial scandal Rabin was Israels minister of defense for much of the 1980s including during the outbreak of the First IntifadaIn 1992 Rabin was reelected as prime minister on a platform embracing the IsraeliPalestinian peace process He signed several historic agreements with the Palestinian leadership as part of the Oslo Accords In 1994 Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with longtime political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Rabin also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994 In November 1995 he was assassinated by Yigal Amir an extremist who opposed the terms of the Oslo Accords Amir was convicted of Rabins murder and sentenced to life imprisonment Rabin was the first nativeborn prime minister of Israel the only prime minister to be assassinated and the second to die in office after Levi Eshkol Rabin has become a symbol of the IsraeliPalestinian peace process