Bill Clinton scheduled to address Rabin remembrance rally in Tel Aviv

Israelis mark the 20th anniversary of the Rabin assassination this year.

Former United States president Bill Clinton will speak at a Tel Aviv rally marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Activist group Peace Now – which organized the rally along with the left-wing Meretz party and others – estimated there were a few 6,000 people attending. Clinton stood between Rabin and the late PLO chief Yasser Arafat at the signing of the Oslo Accords peace agreement in Washington, DC, in September 1993.

One protester named Zeev told AFP that the absence of a peace process contributed to the current violence.

“The path that was stopped in 1995 is very much the path that needs to be taken today”, Peace Now spokeswoman Anat Ben Nun told AFP. I am not talking about safety but the lack of (political) progress, the lack of hope.

Ten Israelis have been killed in attacks, and at least 54 Palestinian were killed in clashes or following attacks. Eight Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in knife attacks.

In a bid to restore calm, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday that Israel had agreed to put CCTVs in the al-Aqsa compound, to prove it does not attempt to change the status quo at the holy site.

“The situation is insane”, he said.

“We must ensure that the day upon which we remember Rabin’s murder will be a day belonging to all Israel; all its camps, all its sectors, a day of self-examination for the Israeli people, a time of self-examination for Israeli democracy”, he said Sunday evening during the annual memorial ceremony at the president’s residence in Jerusalem.