Yitzhak Rabin

Rabin returned to power in 1992, fifteen years after his first term, and became central to the Oslo Accords with the PLO, sealed by his handshake with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993, and to the peace treaty with Jordan in 1994; that year he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Arafat. His second term was one of the most consequential and divisive in Israeli history, as the accords set off mass protests on the right while terror attacks continued. He believed Israel needed peace agreements to secure its future as a Jewish and democratic state.

On 4 November 1995, at the end of a peace rally in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a Jewish extremist who opposed the Oslo process. From a Jewish-history perspective, his assassination was a national trauma and a turning point in Israeli politics, symbolizing the dangers of internal division; the square now bears his name, and his memorial day is marked each year on 12 Cheshvan.