evi

* 2001 – Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze ' evi became the first Israeli minister to be assassinated in a terrorist attack.

Ze ' evi was born in 1926 in Jerusalem.

During his youth, Ze ' evi went to school in Givat HaShlosha.

Ze ' evi had five children, Palmach, Sayar, Masada, Tze ' ela and Arava.

In 1948, Rehavam Ze ' evi was a platoon commander in the IDF.

In the late 1960s, Ze ' evi formed the elite Sayeret Kharuv, an anti-terror battalion, at the time when IDF Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev had begun to focus manpower and budget on armoured tank units, resulting in huge cutbacks in infantry forces.

Ze ' evi, known for his concern for Israel's captured or missing soldiers, wore a military identity disc with their names on his neck.

Ze ' evi resigned from this position in 1977, when Likud's Menachem Begin became prime minister.

In 1988, Ze ' evi established the Moledet ( Homeland ) party advocating the population transfer of Arabs from Judea and Samaria ( West Bank ) and the Gaza Strip to the neighboring Arab countries.

After the Madrid Conference of 1991, Ze ' evi withdrew from the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir, remaining in the opposition for a decade.

Following the election of Ariel Sharon in February 2001, Ze ' evi joined the coalition and was appointed Tourism Minister of Israel.

In 1981, Ze ' evi was appointed director of what was then the Israel Museum in Tel Aviv and got its name changed to the Eretz Israel Museum – the change having political connotations, given the associations with Eretz Israel.

Ze ' evi was famous for having one of the largest collection of books about Israel and its history.

Ze ' evi was shot in the Jerusalem Hyatt hotel on Mount Scopus on 17 October 2001 by four Palestinian gunmen.

In December 2007, Hamdi Quran confessed in an Israeli court to assassinating Ze ' evi together with Basel al-Asmar after being instructed by PFLP member Majdi Rahima Rimawi.

According to the verdict, Rehima was the one who supplied the gunmen with a photo of Ze ' evi, details of the hotel in which he would be staying and information on the hotel layout.

Ze ' evi advocated the population transfer by agreement of 3. 3 million residents of the West Bank and Gaza to Arab nations.

In July 1987, Ze ' evi presented his ideas at a forum in Tel Aviv, describing the plan as a voluntary transfer and the only way to make peace with the Arabs.

After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Ze ' evi proposed transferring Palestinians to the east side of the Jordan River to serve as a buffer zone against any Iraqi attempt to attack Israel.

In a radio interview in July 2001, Ze ' evi stated that 180, 000 Palestinians worked and lived illegally in Israel.

Binyamin Elon, leader of the Moledet party after Ze ' evi's murder, maintains that Ze ' evi did not hate Arabs.

A few days after the Six Day War, Ze ' evi submitted a plan for the creation of a Palestinian state called the State of Ishmael, with Nablus as its capital.

In 1975, Ehud Olmert, later Prime Minister of Israel, accused Ze ' evi of protecting organized crime figures.

Ze ' evi sued Olmert for libel but lost the case.

* PM Ariel Sharon's remarks on the 3rd Anniversary of the Assassination of Minister Rehavam Ze ' evi z " l an address before the Knesset on 19 October 2004