Israel Peace Rally Honoring Rabin May be Canceled
A major annual peace rally in memory of assassinated Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin could be canceled for the first time in 21 years over a lack of funds, an organizer said Monday.
The rally marking Rabin's death has drawn up to tens of thousands annually in Tel Aviv for a demonstration in support of peace with the Palestinians.
This year's rally was set for Saturday at Rabin Square, where the Nobel peace laureate was shot dead by a Jewish extremist on November 4, 1995.
"We had to give up on organising the rally because we haven't managed to organise sufficient financing," one of the organisers, Hemi Sal, told AFP.
The cancellation is however not definitive, with news of financing troubles having drawn pledges on social media to help organise a spontaneous rally.
"Rabin Square will certainly not be empty Saturday night," Sal said.
An official with Peace Now, one of Israel's main organisations advocating peace with the Palestinians, said it would be willing to join a spontaneous rally.
Isaac Herzog, head of the opposition Labour party, to which Rabin had belonged, said it planned to organise an alternative rally on an unspecified date in November.
Tens of thousands gathered at Rabin Square on the 20th anniversary of his death last year.
Such major peace rallies have become increasingly rare in Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government seen as the most right-wing in the country's history.
Rabin won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo peace accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.
Rabin's attacker, Yigal Amir, was opposed to the Oslo accords. He is serving a life sentence in prison.
Source: Agence France Presse
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