Tel Aviv - Former US president Bill Clinton has said he believes that Israel would today be living in peace with its neighbours had former premier Yitzhak Rabin not been killed in 1995, Israeli media reported Sunday.

"Not a single week has gone by in which I have not reaffirmed my conviction that had he not lost his life on that terrible November night, within three years we would have had a comprehensive agreement for peace in the Middle East," Clinton was quoted as having said in a speech at the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv late Saturday.

Rabin was shot dead at a peace rally in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995 by an extremist Jew opposed to the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords Rabin had signed with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Clinton, who was a close friend of Rabin and instrumental in bringing the two sides together during his presidency, emphasized there was no alternative to Rabin's vision of peace.

Israelis and Palestinians could hurt or help each other, he said, but the fact was that both would have to live in the region with each other.