Thirty years after the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Rabin Square in Tel Aviv saw a gathering that, by sheer numbers, might not have been remarkable. Yet, the air was charged with something profoundly significant.
Comprising roughly 50,000 attendees, many from an older generation, the rally’s true impact wasn’t about its size. Instead, it was the recurring, almost startling, emergence of a word rarely spoken aloud in Israel’s major political arenas in recent memory.
Chants of “Yes to peace, no to violence!” resonated through the square, a stark departure from the usual rhetoric.
Yair Lapid, the centrist opposition leader, declared unequivocally, “Pursuing peace is a Jewish act.”
Similarly, Yair Golan, a former general and head of the left-wing Democrats, emphasized that Rabin understood peace as a source of strength and power, not weakness.
Rabin’s assassination on November 4, 1995, brutally ended the Oslo peace process and subsequently tainted the word “peace” itself. In Israel’s increasingly rightward political landscape, advocating for peace became synonymous with naiveté, or worse, with left-wing radicalism.
Yet, a new, evolving peace process is now cautiously taking shape. Driven by a resolute Trump administration and its Muslim allies, efforts are underway to transform the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas into a more enduring resolution.
These ambitious plans include calls for the demilitarization and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, starting with the Israeli-controlled eastern sector. There’s also a desire to extend the Abraham Accords, which successfully normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations, to new countries like Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Lebanon. Some even dare to hope for a future pathway to Palestinian statehood someday.
However, before these hopeful visions can take root, a critical prerequisite remains: the return of all Israeli captives’ bodies by Hamas. Israel confirmed Monday morning the overnight recovery of three more remains: Col. Assaf Hamami, Sgt. Oz Daniel, and Capt. Omer Neutra, an Israeli-American dual citizen. Eight other bodies are still believed to be held in Gaza.
This period is marked by both immense promise and profound danger.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only agreed to the cease-fire with Hamas under significant pressure. Within his coalition, many still favor reigniting full-scale conflict, aiming for “total victory” rather than risking Hamas’s survival, regrouping, rearming, and re-establishing its military threat to Israel.
Among ordinary Israelis, there’s a tangible feeling of a nation at a crossroads, extending beyond just the Gaza conflict. The past year saw tens of thousands more citizens leave Israel than arrive. Across the political spectrum, many believe the upcoming election will be a monumental decision, shaping the nation’s identity and influencing whether more Israelis choose to remain or depart.
At the heart of this national introspection lies Israel’s fragile social contract. This covenant is severely strained, particularly between the ultra-Orthodox community—hundreds of thousands of whom recently demonstrated in Jerusalem for continued military service exemption—and the tens of thousands of reservists who have endured exhausting, multiple tours in Gaza.
The direction forward largely depends on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decisions in the coming months: what external pressures he yields to, what he champions as his top priority, and how, at 76, he envisions his ultimate legacy.
Netanyahu’s recent mentions of peace, rekindled by Trump’s influence, largely echo the long-standing conservative principle of “peace through strength.”
Equally crucial will be the strategies employed by those vying to unseat him. They must appeal to an Israeli electorate exhausted by conflict yet deeply wary of any peace initiatives.
According to Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “In a way, Trump liberated the liberal camp from its long silence about peace.”
However, Talshir warned, “It’s not going to help them. It’s much easier nowadays to tell Israelis, ‘You cannot live with the Palestinians because of Oct. 7.’ So for the liberal camp to win, the election must be fought over what kind of Israel you want to have — a religious, nationalistic, authoritarian state, or a liberal, Jewish democracy.”
The speeches on Saturday night extensively highlighted Rabin’s past as a celebrated warrior for Israel before he pursued peace with the Palestinians.
Speakers also drew sobering parallels between the current polarized political climate in Israel and the tense atmosphere that tragically preceded Rabin’s assassination.
General Golan, whose military career stalled after a 2016 speech comparing contemporary Israel to pre-Holocaust Germany, reflected on Rabin’s murder. He stated that the three fatal shots continue to reverberate whenever the government incites against its own citizens, labels patriots as traitors, or allows civic protesters to be assaulted.
Opposition leader Lapid accused the right-wing and religious parties within the ruling coalition of twisting the essence of Jewish identity, much like Rabin’s critics did, transforming it into a justification for violence.
“The violent racism of Itamar Ben-Gvir is not Judaism,” Lapid asserted, directly referencing Netanyahu’s national security minister. He further condemned, “Anyone who suggests dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza does not represent Judaism,” alluding to a suggestion made by another ultranationalist minister.
“Settler violence is not Judaism,” Lapid concluded. “Judaism belongs neither to the extremists, nor to the corrupt, nor to those who evade military service.”