Rivlin meets with Bill Clinton, ‘a true friend of Israel’

President Reuven Rivlin met with former US president Bill Clinton in Jerusalem on Friday, calling the American leader “a true friend of the State of Israel.” Clinton also met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The former president is in Israel to participate in Saturday’s rally marking the 20th anniversary of the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Rivlin, who will also make a speech at the event, said Clinton’s attendance was “a clear testament” to his kinship with the Jewish nation.

The two discussed recent developments in the region, including Israeli-Palestinian tensions, unrest and the almost daily attacks against Israelis over the past month.

The rally on Saturday night, at the square that now bears Rabin’s name, will cap a week of commemorative events in Israel, which have included a state ceremony at Mount Herzl and a special Knesset session.

Rabin was slain on November 5, 1995, by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir at the same plaza that will host Saturday’s rally.

In his eulogy for Rabin at the state funeral in Jerusalem following the assassination, Clinton memorably ended with the words “Shalom, chaver,” or “Goodbye, friend.”

In a 2013 Channel 2 interview broadcast for the first time Monday night, Clinton said that had Rabin lived, the Israeli leader would have been able to reach a peace deal within three years, because “the Palestinians trusted him.” The interview, which was filmed on Clinton’s last trip to Israel in June 2013, was broadcast to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the assassination.

Clinton, highly emotional throughout the interview, said that he “really loved the man” and that he had expected they would both “live 20 more years, and I would come here [to Israel] and see him every chance I could.

The former US president recalled the moments after he heard that his friend had been shot. “I ran upstairs to see my wife,” Clinton recounted. “We literally just sat there and held each other for, like, 20 minutes.”

He added: “My first thoughts were not even for the peace process, they were just for my friend.” He said he thought “of how many of us wished that we could have stopped it; jumped in the way.”

JTA contributed to this report.