Mr. Chairman. My fellow members of Knesset. My friend Shimon Peres;

"Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel" [Samuel II 3:38] -- so mourned King David after the political murder which took place at the dawning of Jewish history, the murder of Abner ben Ner. In his lamentation for Abner, David describes the murderers as "wicked men" [Samuel II 3:34], and succeeds in overcoming the crisis to embark on a new path of internal unity, prosperity and peace. We never imagined that in our generation we would witness a repetition of this slaying; "A prince and a great man" fell last week at the hands of a "wicked man".

A week has passed since we heard the terrible news, yet the heart still refuses to believe and the mind refuses to absorb that Yitzhak Rabin is no longer among us. In the name of the Likud movement, and in the name of the entire opposition, I send condolences to the Rabin family in its deep grief, the grief of the entire people of Israel.

Yitzhak Rabin OBM joined the national struggle for independence and freedom as a central figure of great influence -- as a commander in the Palmach and the IDF in the War of Independence; as Commander of the Northern Command during the difficult years of the Syrian attacks on the settlements in the Jordan Valley; as Chief of Staff in the Six Day War, when the IDF stood against the combined attack of four armies and won an historic victory; as ambassador in Washington when we struggled on the diplomatic front to preserve the achievements of the Six Day War; as Prime Minister during the difficult period after the Yom Kippur War, during which the IDF was rebuilt and our military strength was restored; as Minister of Defense during the intafada, when the IDF had to adapt to an entirely new situation; And in recent years, as Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of a government leading a complex and controversial diplomatic process.

I personally well remember the time when as Prime Minister he took the fateful decision to carry out the rescue mission in Entebbe. It fell upon Yitzhak Rabin to deal with the terrible choice between giving in to terror and the brazen and determined struggle against it, and he chose the struggle.

This was an extraordinarily difficult choice, since the failure of the mission would have resulted in a terrible tragedy for the State of Israel. Future generations will never forget his courage in assuming the responsibility for the daring mission, which set the standard for unrelenting struggle against terror, and uplifted the pride of Jews everywhere.

I was also privileged to work with Yitzhak Rabin in the last period of the National Unity Government, during which he made a continuous effort to develop a defense policy which enjoyed broad national approval. Those were the years of grace in terms of internal unity in the nation, to which he made an important and critical contribution.

In my eyes this is the principal point that we must take from his many years of public service. During the course of most of his public life, the personality and actions of Yitzhak Rabin served as one of the important elements of national unity governments. He made every effort to maintain and continue such a united national framework, understanding that only through unity can we attain national achievements, even if their pace is slower.

In the last three years Yitzhak Rabin OBM led the diplomatic process, parts of which we supported without hesitation - and other parts of which we were, and remain, opposed to. This is a deep and fundamental debate which touches on the very existence and future of the State of Israel:

How do we achieve peace for generations and not just for a moment? Where will the borders of the State of Israel be? How will the unity of Jerusalem be protected? And how will the security of each and every citizen and the entire State be ensured?

In this debate we all want peace, and the only basic disagreement between us is the path to achieve it. We believe in our course, and we will struggle to achieve it by democratic means. In a democratic regime an assassin's bullet cannot change, must not change neither the government's policy nor the opposition's.

The chief role of the opposition is to voice the contrarian view in the national debate, without which democracy becomes a tyranny of one opinion. Without an opposition there is no democracy.

The loathsome attack on Yitzhak Rabin raised in full force the danger to a free society: First and foremost, the danger of violence from a handful of extreme individuals who do not accept the decision of the majority and the rule of law. We must fight with all available legal means those who preach violence and who carry it out, and we must do this in a united fashion - opposition and coalition alike - in order to uproot them from national life.

But in this battle against the extreme fringe, we must take care not to place collective blame on an entire community which is loyal to the State and acts within the framework of law - and I refer in particular to the religious community, which has been severely attacked these days, a community whose contribution is great in all areas of our lives.

We must put an end to incitement, to hatred, to delegitimization of the political opponent. We will carry out even the harshest debate without the excess of vilification, sticking to the point at hand and maintaining mutual respect and tolerance. Above all, we will remember that we are two parts of the same house, the same family, the same people. "A House divided cannot stand", said Lincoln. This is especially true for our people which is still beset by strong forces opposed to its existence. The feeling of unity - of one family - is a basic requirement for our existence, and we must now make every effort to restore and strengthen it.

450 years after the murder of Avner Ben Ner there was another political murder in Jerusalem -- the attack on Gedaliah Ben Achikam, leader of the Jewish remnants after the destruction of the First Temple. In contrast to what happened during David's time, this murder caused the complete breakup of the Jewish community in Israel and its dispersal.

And who are we today if not the remnants of the greatest destruction to visit our People. After that horrible holocaust we returned to our land, established ourselves here and restored our independence in our ancient homeland. And now again we stand at a critical juncture. Are we to go the way of the remnants of Gedaliah and be decimated in a civil war, or do we take the path of David, who knew to unite the people and establish a united state, whose memory and legacy are with us to this very day?

The decision is entirely ours. No one will make it for us. And the principal responsibility is borne on the shoulders of all the members of this house, and first and foremost on the shoulders of the leaders of the camps - yours, Shimon my friend, as head of the Labor Party and Prime Minister, and mine, as head of the opposition.

May we all have the strength and wisdom to choose the path of conciliation and understanding. This is what the entire nation expects from us. This is what the wonderful youth which we saw this week in its multitudes deserves. This is what the memory of Yitzhak Rabin mandates.

We should all remember: Peace begins at home.

It is generally believed that the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO are fully binding under international law. Exactly the opposite is true. Because these non-treaty agreements run counter to absolutely incontrovertible legal expectations, Israel is now obligated to terminate the agreement. A parallel argument can be made concerning PLO obligations, but this would make little realistic sense, as we shall see, in view of the pertinent and authoritative grounds for termination.

The Oslo Agreements do not constitute treaties because they link a state with a nonstate party. In and of itself, this incontestable fact, drawn from the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, certainly does not call for termination. But because the nonstate party in this case happens to be a terrorist organization whose leaders must be punished for egregious crimes, any agreement with this party that offers rewards rather than punishment is entirely null and void. Indeed, in view of the peremptory expectation known in law as Nullum crimen sine poena, "No crime without a punishment," the state party in such an agreement - in this case the State of Israel - violates international law by honoring the agreement.

Terrorist crimes mandate universal cooperation in apprehension and punishment. As punishers of "grave breaches" under international law (defined at the Fourth Geneva Convention), all states and other legal "persons" are expected to search out and prosecute, or extradite for prosecution, individual perpetrators. This assuredly does not mean holding hands and signing documents on the White House lawn. The "good offices" of the United States do not in any way mitigate Israel's legal failings in this matter; rather, it simply makes one more state, the United States of America, complicit in this failure.

Regarding the peremptory norm of Nullum crimen sine poena, it was reaffirmed with unassailable authority at Nuremberg in 1945 -46, and in particular response to crimes against the Jewish People. Moreover, this norm was cited specifically by Israel's Attorney General, Gideon Hausner, in his prosecution of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann.

It follows that the current State of Israel has a special obligation to stand by this peremptory rule regarding PLO crimes and Israel's juridical relationship to the PLO, an obligation greater perhaps than that of any other statee in the world. For Israel t willfully reject such an obligation, a rejection that has in fact already occurred several times over, may be especially violative of international law and, as a non-jurisprudential aside, is especially shameful for the Jewish State.

Another legal reason for prompt Israeli termination of Oslo lies in what international law calls rebus sic stantibus. Defined literally as "so long as conditions remain the same," this doctrine of a fundamental change of circumstances now requires Israel to cease compliance. Israel's traditional obligations to the Agreement ended when a change occurred in those circumstances that existed at the effective dates of the Agreement and whose continuance formed a tacit condition of the Agreement's ongoing validity. This change, of course, involved multiple material breaches by the PLO, especially those that concern control of anti-Israel terrorism and extradition of terrorists.

Today, rebus sic stantibus has become operative for Israel because of a profound change created by the PLO in the circumstances that formed the cause, motive and rationale of consent.

Finally, Israel's obligation to terminate the Oslo Agreements stems from a related principle concerning national self-preservation. Under this peremptory norm, any agreement may be terminated unilaterally following changes in conditions that make performance of the agreement injurious to fundamental rights, especially the rights of existence and independence. Known in law as "rights of necessity," this norm was explained with particular lucidity by none other than Thomas Jefferson. In his "Opinion on the French Treaties," written on April 28, 1793, Jefferson stated that when performance, in international agreements, "becomes impossible, nonperformance is not immoral.

So if performance becomes self-destructive to the party, the law of self-preservation overrules the laws of obligation to others." Later, in that same document, Jefferson wrote: "The nation itself, bound necessarily to whatever its preservation and safety require, cannot enter into engagements contrary to its indispensable obligations." Israel, one must remind Messrs. Rabin and Peres, has an "indispensable obligation" to endure.

It is plausible, of course, that Israel's current Prime Minister will pay no heed to the above legal arguments. It is essential, however, that his successor does pay such heed, and that he not assume, incorrectly, that Israel must comply with an altogether illegal agreement. To comply with international law, as indeed it must, Israel must cease compliance with the Oslo Accords. That is its only legal course of action. There is an ironic resonance to this demand, but it is nonetheless a compelling and valid demand.

On the very day that he signed the Declaration of Principles in 1993 (Oslo I), Yasser Arafat addressed the Palestinian people on Jordan television, assuring them that the agreement was nothing more than the implementation of the 1974 PLO Plan of Phases, a 10-point scheme for the destruction of Israel in stages. The first stage, said Arafat, is "the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian soil that is liberated or from which the Israelis withdraw." The same assertion was repeated by Chairman Arafat after the signing of Oslo II. These assertions, considered together with Israel's peremptory right to endure, its peremptory obligation to punish crimes and the PLO's persistent breaches of all agreements with the Jewish State, obligate prompt termination of an altogether misnamed "Peace Process."