November 4, 1995

The rally was called Yes to Peace, No to Violence. A hundred thousand people came to the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv on a Saturday night. He had been told there were threats and had not wanted a vest.

He was not a man who sang in public. At the end of it he sang Shir LaShalom with Miri Aleph - the song for peace, which says that no prayer will bring back a man whose candle has gone out - and he folded the sheet with the words on it and put it in his breast pocket.

He went down the steps at the back toward his car at about half past nine. A law student named Yigal Amir, who had been waiting near the car park for some time and had been seen there, stepped forward and shot him twice in the back at close range. Amir was a religious nationalist who believed the Oslo Accords were a betrayal and that religious law permitted the killing.

He was declared dead at Ichilov Hospital at ten past eleven. He was seventy-three. The sheet of paper in his pocket came out soaked through with his blood; it is in a museum now.

Leaders from eighty countries came to the funeral, including the King of Jordan and the President of Egypt. King Hussein, who had fought him in two wars, called him a brother.

The square was renamed for him. The peace he signed did not survive.