The widow of the murdered Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, asked yesterday why her husband had to die over a Middle East peace deal that one of his sternest critics, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, had gone on to seal.
"Honestly, it's not an easy day for me," Mrs Leah Rabin said after the agreement between the Israeli Prime Minister and Mr Yasser Arafat was announced.
"Today maybe they will wonder what was he murdered for," said Mrs Rabin, whose husband was assassinated on November 4th, 1995, by a right-wing Jew opposed to the land-for-peace deals her husband launched with Mr Arafat in 1993.
She spoke before plans to sign the deal hit a dramatic snag over a push by Mr Netanyahu to win freedom for the jailed Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard.
At the time of her husband's murder, Mrs Rabin accused Mr Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition Likud party, of creating a hateful climate by leading protests where her husband was called a "traitor" and "murderer" and depicted as a Nazi and Arab in keffiyeh headdress.
Yesterday's deal was the most significant since the breakthrough Oslo Accord that Mr Rabin and Mr Arafat sealed with an historic handshake on the White House lawn on September 13th, 1993.
"He [Rabin] tried to make a peace that today they tried to manifest when they spent nine days and nights confronting each other at Wye Plantation," Mrs Rabin said.
"He would be thinking, `What have you done? You could have achieved the same thing two or three years ago without being in a pressure cooker situation in Wye Plantation if your mood was a different one . . . of trying to trust and believe'."
Mrs Rabin said that by shaking hands with Mr Arafat five years ago, her husband - who as the general commanding the Israeli army captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war - reached across more than 100 years of hatred and conflict to foster a mood of reconciliation.
"I am not interested in advising Mr Netanyahu because from my point of view he is evil, because I hold him in a way responsible. He was there when they called my husband `traitor' and `murderer' because he signed the Oslo agreement. So what are they doing today?" she said.
"Wye Plantation looked like a wrestling arena rather than a peace conference. They were really hitting each other and using very ugly language."
She said Mr Netanyahu had accomplished less than her husband would have achieved "because the relations have so deteriorated" between Israelis and Palestinians.
Mrs Rabin had praise for President Clinton. "He was always there for reconciliation in the Middle East. After the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, he is still there. He, together with the leaders of the Middle East, started and they needed to save it," she said.
"Wye Plantation looked like a horrible pressure cooker, and this agreement looks like a safety valve that jumped out of the pressure cooker where the soup is still sort of emotionally charged with suspicion."