Clinton marks Rabin anniversary

TEL AVIV - About 200,000 Israelis gathered with foreign dignitaries in Tel Aviv to mark the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

In Israel's biggest peace rally since its Gaza pullout, they held signs with slogans such as "The path to peace will never be killed".

The crowd stood for a moment's silence and sang memorial songs in Rabin square, where Rabin was killed in 1995 and which has since seen numerous peace rallies.

Rabin was shot dead by an ultranationalist Israeli Jew who opposed his 1993 interim peace deal with the Palestinians, for which he shared a Nobel Peace Prize with late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Former US President Bill Clinton joined dozens of foreign dignitaries at the rally. Clinton, who helped broker the 1993 peace accord, said he had loved Rabin and urged Israelis see his work through.

"If he were here, he would say, '... If you really think I lived a good life, if you think I made a noble sacrifice in death, then for goodness sakes take up my work and see it through to the end,"' Clinton said.

The demonstration, which organisers said was about 200,000-strong, was the biggest peace rally in Israel since its Gaza pullout on September 12.

Violence has worsened since Rabin's death, especially during the past five years of a Palestinian uprising in which more than 3,400 Palestinians and almost 1,000 Israelis have been killed.

In recent violence, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man near the Gaza border fence with Israel, Palestinian medics said. The Israeli army said troops fired at three men trying to plant an explosive device in the area, hitting two.

One of the men who was wounded in the incident told Palestinian medics he and his friends were unarmed and planned to sneak across the border to look for work.

The Tel Aviv rally was a huge contrast to the modest memorials Palestinians held in Gaza and the West Bank this week to mark the first anniversary of the death of Arafat.

Israel and the United States accused Arafat of fomenting violence, a charge he had always denied.

The demonstration was also a major show of strength by Israel's left, which wants peace talks to resume and opposes Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans to strengthen Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

But Tamir Abraham, 59, said Sharon had "taken a step in Rabin's legacy" by carrying out his pullout plan, saying: "Peace is a process and the process has begun with us leaving Gaza."

Also attending the memorial was new Israeli Labour Party chief Amir Peretz, who ousted Shimon Peres in a Thursday poll.

Peretz, a socialist who has vowed to push for economic reforms to help Israel's poor, has threatened to pull Labour out of Sharon's government next week and call for a new parliamentary election to be held as early as March.

In his first public appearance since his election, Peretz told the crowd Israel needed to evacuate West Bank settlements and work towards a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians.

"We need a moral road map towards the end of the occupation and the signing of a permanent agreement," Peretz said. "We will not rest until we have carried out (Rabin's) way."

Peres, who shared the Nobel prize with Rabin and Arafat, also attended the rally with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was in office in 2000 when the Palestinian uprising broke out after peace talks became deadlocked.

- REUTERS