Who was to blame for Rabin’s death? Fingers pointed in every direction. Doves found incitement to murder in the overheated rhetoric of hawks. Extremists claimed Rabin himself was responsible for the violent climate that led to his death; by planning to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they said, he betrayed the Jewish settlers living there. Israelis on both sides of the peace issue blamed the security services for failing to protect the prime minister. The security services, rapidly rounding up suspects, blamed the assassination not on the lone gunman that Amir claimed to be, but on a wider and more menacing plot. “We believe there was a conspiracy,” said Police Minister Moshe Shahal. Without the help of others, he said, “it would have been impossible to assassinate the prime minister.” By the end of the week, eight suspects had been taken into custody, and investigators were pursuing a militant rabbi who may have provided a religious blessing for the murder.
There had been warnings of a plot against Rabin, but the security men were worried primarily about Arab assassins, not Jewish ones. They thought there might be an attempt to exact revenge for the murder of Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki the week before. And they were looking for car bombs, not for a shooter. When Amir loitered near Rabin’s car, the bodyguards took him for a driver. As he opened fire, he tried to confuse the guards by shouting: “It’s nothing! It’s nothing!” Rabin and a wounded bodyguard collapsed into the ear. As it sped to a hospital, the driver heard Rabin say: “It hurts, but not terribly.”
As a result of the foul-up, a top official of Shin Bet, the internal security agency, quit his job, and three other officials were suspended or transferred. Meanwhile, investigators were peeling away the layers of what they believed was a conspiracy to kill Rabin. “The central figure in the planning was Yigal Amir,” Shahal charged. He said Amir was influenced by militant rabbis who invoked the “pursuer’s decree” in Jewish law, which requires a Jew to kill someone who poses him a mortal danger. Police said the plotters planned to kill ,both Rabin and his foreign minister, Shimon Peres, and then attack Palestinians in order to stop the peace process.
Shahal charged that Amir had two “active partners” in the plot against Rabin. One was his brother Hagai, 27, who admitted to investigators that he had hollowed out the noses of some 9-mm bullets, making them into more lethal “dum-dums.” At least one dum-dum struck Rabin. When a magistrate asked Hagai why he had done the chore for Yigal, he replied: “He is my brother, so I just gave it to him. And you, the state, why did you give him a licensed gun?” Searching the Amir family home, investigators found in the backyard and attic a large supply of grenades, detonators and plastic explosives–“weaponry befitting a terror group,” said a police official. Later, when Hagai returned to court, he said: “My brother did it. I have nothing to do with it. He is not crazy. He did what he did after a lot of thinking.”
The other alleged “partner” was Dror Adani, 27, a West Bank settler who served with Yigal Amir in the army. He admitted that he recently renewed the friendship, but his mother told reporters Adani was blameless. Police also arrested Amir’s friend Ohad Skornik, 23, who was on his honeymoon when they grabbed him. Skornik was accused of knowing in advance about the plan to kill Rabin and failing to report it. His father, a surgeon at the hospital where Rabin was taken, said: “I don’t believe my son was involved in any way at all.” Another 23-year-old student, Michael Epstein, was arrested on the same charge, as was Avishai Rayiv, 28, head of a small hard-line group called Eyal (in Hebrew, an acronym for Jewish Fighting Organization). Rayiv said he knew Yigal Amir but denied that the gunman belonged to Eyal. Late last week, the police arrested an unnamed soldier on suspicion of supplying Amir with weapons. The soldier’s father also was brought in for questioning.
Yigal Amir himself said in a court hearing that “the murder was my obligation according to halakha” (religious law). His friends described him as brilliant and immensely self-assured. In the army, he was known as “Natznatz” (the bright one) and was reckoned a good soldier. In civilian life, he studied law at Bar-Ilan University and acquired a pistol permit by claiming, untruthfully, that he lived in a West Bank settlement. He often argued the merits of killing Rabin. “This should have been stopped,” a friend said, sitting in a car outside Bar-Ilan, afraid of being picked up by the police. “But nobody thought this was more than words.”
AMIR CAME FROM A RELATIVELY poor Sephardic family, but he intended to marry well. His girlfriend, Nava Holzman, was beautiful, rich, intelligent and religious. But she dropped him, and Amir’s spirits crashed, his friends said. It was then, last January, that he made his first attempt on Rabin’s life, according to the Police Minister Shahal. Police say there were five other failed attempts. Then, on Nov. 4, Amir finally got Rabin in the sights of his 9-mm Beretta pistol.
Beyond the small circle of alleged plotters, many Israelis–right-wing politicians, settlers and extremist rabbis, among others-had indulged in violent rhetoric that may have helped to incite the assassination. At anti-peace rallies, Rabin was denounced as a traitor and a murderer and dressed in effigy with an Arab kaffiyeh or a Nazi SS unform. And although he deplored political calumny, Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud bloc, didn’t walk away from rallies where hateful slogans were displayed. Rabin’s widow, Leah, who received Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat in her home after the funeral (from which he had tactfully absented himself), snubbed Netanyahu. She said she blamed the opposition for inspiring her husband’s killer. “They were very, very violent in their expressions,” she charged. Netanyahu was careful not to attack the widow, but he lashed back at his other critics. “This is sheer McCarthyism,” he told an interviewer. “What you are witnessing is a classic case of guilt by association.”
Among the unprecedented array of world leaders who came to Jerusalem for Rabin’s funeral, Bill Clinton urged Israelis to “stay the righteous course” toward peace in the Middle East. Acting Prime Minister Peres, Rabin’s partner in that process, told his Arab neighbors: “None of us can stop, postpone or hesitate about peace.” But then the presidents, prime ministers and TV anchor-men went home, leaving Israelis staring at each other in wary exhaustion, bitterly divided. Rabin’s murder devastated his supporters and chagrined his political opponents. An opinion poll showed Peres leading his rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the Likud opposition, by 54 percent to 23 percent; of those surveyed, 74 percent said the government should continue to implement its peace agreement with the Palestinians. But the assassination failed to convince right-wing extremists that the time had come to trade land for peace.
EXCEPT FOR SOME ON THE FAR right, most Israelis seemed to agree it was time to turn down the political heat. Amir’s parents apologized for their son’s crime. “He isn’t mine anymore,” said his mother, Geula. Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair asked the news media not to publicize inflammatory statements and warned that inciters would be prosecuted. “I am ashamed that somebody was able to use Judaism to kill another Jew, especially the prime minister,” said West Bank settler Meisha Mishcan, who hated Rabin and disagreed with his policies.
It was Rabin who gave the government the strength to make peace. An old soldier who could be very tough with the Arabs, he had hard-line credentials that the more polished and pliable Peres can never match-or fully replace. The government has another year left on its mandate, and Peres, who was expected to be confirmed as prime minister this week, said he would not call an early election. He would have to shuffle the cabinet, and that may strengthen his hand. One minister who seemed destined for a higher-profile role was Interior’s Ehud Barak, 55, a general who retired early this year as army chief of staff. Rabin was grooming Barak as his successor. The younger man was raised on a kibbutz and toughened as a battlefield commander. Like Rabin, Barak looks uncomfortable in a suit and tie, a plus for those Israelis who still prefer their leaders a bit rough around the edges. Barak will not be able to entirely fill what he describes as “that huge black hole in the political landscape of Israel.” But he may prove his value to Peres as Israeli troops withdraw from the West Bank, or when the next Arab suicide bomber strikes. When peace is under assault, the cause will need some of the implacable support that it used to get from Yitz-hak Rabin.
