TEL AVIV, Nov. 7 (Xinhua) -- Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered at the port city of Tel Aviv on Saturday night for the annual rally to commemorate the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

    Israeli President Shimon Peres, current chairman of Rabin's Labor Party and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livini and some other prestigious figures joined Rabin's family in the massive service at a square renamed after the two-term prime minister and located near the spot of the notorious shooting.

    "Yitzhak is not with us, but he lives in our midst as a figure, as a policy, as a purpose: a joint purpose of a just society and comprehensive peace -- two inseparable goals... The three shots that caused his death were aimed at the peace process, and they were fired to kill hope," said a mournful and indignant Peres.

    While stressing that his country wants true peace, the president called upon Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has recently voiced a deep frustration with the unwieldy peace process with Israel and declared to retire from politics after the Palestinian presidential election in January, "not to give up."

    "The path (to peace) is not an easy one, and we will suffer obstacles and victims, but it is because of this that we must persist," said Barak for his part, urging Abbas and Syrian President Bashar Assad to "come to the negotiating table."

    Appearing in a video message broadcast at the occasion, U.S. President Barack Obama reassured Israelis that the bond between Israel and the United States is unbreakable and that the U.S. commitment to Israel's security will never be undermined.

    Meanwhile, Obama, who vowed to be personally involved in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, urged the Jewish state to move forward on the peace track, stressing that Israel will not find true security as long as Palestinians are gripped by despair.

    Rabin was gunned down on Nov. 4, 1995 by a religious ultra-nationalist when he was leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv, a year after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with then foreign minister Peres and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat thanks to their contribution to the signing of the Oslo Accords, a historic agreement that has served as the guidelines for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

    Among a variety of other memorial events, the Israeli government held a state ceremony at Rabin's graveyard in Jerusalem late last month, and the parliament also convened a special session in his memory. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deplored the crime and called for an end to violence and extremism.