Anwar Sadat & Yitchak RabinPrint Page

The Peace Grove memorial commemorates Anwar Sadat and Yitchak Rabin recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize who gave their lives in the pursuit of peace. The memorial consists of a "Dove Seat" and a "Peace Plinth", both of solid stone.   The Dove Seat is a seat structure, the back being the design of a dove with its wings spread.   The Peace Plinth is a solid square base which displays the plaque.

Muhammad Anwar El Sadat ( 25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981.

Convinced that peace with Israel would reap an enormous "peace dividend," Sadat initiated his most important diplomatic ploy. In a speech to the Egyptian parliament in 1977, Sadat affirmed his desire to go anywhere to negotiate a peace with the Israelis. Even, he affirmed, he would go to the Israeli parliament to speak for peace. The Israeli's responded with an invitation to do just that and Sadat's speech to the Israeli Knesset initiated a new momentum for peace that would eventually culminate in the 1978 Camp David Accords and a final peace treaty with Israel in 1979. For his efforts, Sadat received the Nobel Prize for Peace.

At home, Sadat's new relationship with the west and his peace treaty generated considerable domestic opposition, especially among fundamentalist Muslim groups. In 1980 and in 1981, Sadat took desperate gambles to respond to these new internal problems. He negotiated a number of loans to support improvements in everyday life. And he simultaneously enacted laws outlawing protest and declared that the Shari'a would be the basis of all new Egyptian law. October 6, 1981, Sadat died at the hands of fundamentalists assassins during a military review celebrating the 1973 Suez crossing.

Yitzhak Rabin (1 March 1922 – 4 November 1995) was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995.

Rabin's second term as Prime Minister was marked by two historic events - the Oslo Agreements with the Palestinians and the Treaty of Peace with Jordan . Working closely with Shimon Peres, the Foreign Minister and his longtime rival, he masterminded negotiations on the Declaration of Principle signed with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) at the White House in September 1993.  Rabin, Peres and Arafat received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize and opened negotiations with the Palestinians on autonomy in Gaza and some areas of Judea and Samaria and on the establishment of a Palestinian Authority. Then, in October 1994, a Treaty of Peace was signed with the Kingdom of Jordan. This encouraged the development of ties with additional Arab countries in North Africa and the Persian Gulf.

On November 4, 1995, on leaving a mass rally for peace held under the slogan "Yes to Peace, No to Violence," Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish right-wing extremist. Age 73 at his death, he was laid to rest before a shocked and grieving nation, in a state funeral on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem, attended by leaders from around the world.

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