Israel is committed to peace and will continue to pursue peace until the mission is accomplished, President Shimon Peres said Wednesday at a memorial ceremony for late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The ceremony, held at the President's Residence, was attended by Rabin's relatives, students, and youth group members. It marked the first in a series of commemoration events in Rabin's memory.
"Peace has many external enemies…and also skeptics at home," Peres said. "Yitzhak's murder interfered with and hindered the diplomatic process, yet its necessity for the purpose of reaching historic understanding between us and our neighbors has been made completely clear."
"The notion of peace, the value of peace, and the aspiration for peace are entrenched in the Jewish Torah, Jewish culture, and Jewish tradition," he said. "We won't let off until the mission is accomplished."
Turning his attention to the peace efforts led by Rabin and himself, Peres said: "When we started, all the Palestinians constituted one terror camp. Now there is an Authority we can negotiate with."
The president also spoke about the night of Rabin's assassination, saying that he never saw the late PM so convinced and gleeful as he was during the peace rally in Tel Aviv where he was killed.
"He deserved the love – the bullets of the despicable murderer hurt the entire nation," he said.
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