Excerpts from the speech the prime minister gave before the Knesset on October 5, 1995, weeks before his assassination, asking to ratify the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement.

Yitzhak Rabin with Clinton and Arafat at the White House in 1994.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

Today, the government presents to the Knesset the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The government will seek the Knesset's approval and will view the Knesset's decision as a vote of confidence in the government.

The Jewish people, which has known suffering and pain, has also known how to preserve its faith, its heritage and its tradition during thousands of years of exile, and has realized the dream of generations. We have, with our own eyes, been privileged to see the return to Zion, the return of the children to their borders.

Here, in the land of Israel, we returned and built a nation. Here, in the land of Israel, we established a state. The land of the prophets, which bequeathed to the world the values of morality, law and justice, was, after two thousand years, restored to its lawful owners - the members of the Jewish people. On its land, we have built an exceptional national home and state.

However, we did not return to an empty land. There were Palestinians here who struggled against us for a hundred wild and bloody years. Many thousands, on both sides, were killed in the battle over the same land, over the same strip of territory, and were joined by the armies of the Arab states. Today, after innumerable wars and bloody incidents, we rule more than 2 million Palestinians through the IDF, and run their lives by a Civil Administration. This is not a peaceful solution.

We can continue to fight. We can continue to kill - and continue to be killed. But we can also try to put a stop to this never-ending cycle of blood. We can also give peace a chance.

The government chose to give peace a chance. The government chose to do something to achieve it.

Members of Knesset, the agreement before you is the continuation of the implementation of the agreements which were signed between the government of Israel and the Palestinians. The first agreement which was brought to you was the Declaration of Principles, which was signed in Washington on 13 September 1993.

The second agreement which was presented to you is called the Cairo Agreement, which was signed in Cairo on 4 May 1994. Both of these agreements were ratified by the Knesset.

Both of the previous agreements, and the third which was submitted today, separately and together, give expression to the policy of the current government, and to its path of promoting peace in the Middle East. As is known, when we formed the government, over three years ago, we said that we would aspire to reach a permanent solution to the Palestinian Arab-Israeli conflict. And today, this government brings, in addition to the signing of the peace treaty with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan - which would not have been achieved without the agreement with the Palestinians - a significant breakthrough in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and an attempt to put an end to decades of terrorism and blood.

We are striving for a permanent solution to the unending bloody conflict between us and the Palestinians and the Arab states.

In the framework of the permanent solution, we aspire to reach, first and foremost, the State of Israel as a Jewish state, at least 80 percent of whose citizens will be, and are, Jews.

At the same time, we also promise that the non-Jewish citizens of Israel - Muslim, Christian, Druse and others - will enjoy full personal, religious and civil rights, like those of any Israeli citizen. Judaism and racism are diametrically opposed.

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.

AND THESE are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:

A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma'aleh Adumim and Givat Ze'ev - as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.

B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.

C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the Green Line, prior to the Six Day War.

D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

Members of Knesset, this government, with the Labor Party at its center, this party made its positions known through its party platform, which it made known to the public. Even before the elections to the current Knesset, we made clear and we emphasized to the electorate, at every opportunity, that we preferred a Jewish state, even if not on every part of the land of Israel, to a binational state, which would emerge with the annexation of 2.2 million Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We had to choose between the whole of the land of Israel, which meant a binational state, and whose population, as of today, would comprise 4.5 million Jews, and more than 3 million Palestinians, who are a separate entity - religiously, politically and nationally - and a state with less territory, but which would be a Jewish state. We chose to be a Jewish state.