Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres ( ; ; born Szymon Perski, ; 2 August 1923 – 28 September 2016) was an Israeli politician and statesman who served as the prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the president of Israel from 2007 to 2014. He was a member of twelve cabinets and represented five political parties in a political career spanning 70 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and except for three months out of office in early 2006, served as a member of the Knesset continuously until he was elected president in 2007. Serving in the Knesset for 48 years (with the first uninterrupted stretch lasting more than 46 years), Peres is the longest serving member in the Knesset's history. At the time of his retirement from politics in 2014, he was the world's oldest head of state and was considered the last link to Israel's founding generation, as well as the last Prime Minister to make aliyah rather than being born on territory that would become Israel.

From a young age, he was renowned for his oratorical brilliance, and was chosen as a protégé by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father. He began his political career in the late 1940s, holding several diplomatic and military positions during and directly after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. His first high-level government position was as deputy director general of defense in 1952 which he attained at the age of 28, and director general from 1953 until 1959. In 1956, he took part in the historic negotiations on the Protocol of Sèvres, which was described by British prime minister Anthony Eden as the "highest form of statesmanship". In 1963, he held negotiations with U.S. president John F. Kennedy, which resulted in the sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, the first sale of U.S. military equipment to Israel. Peres represented Mapai, Rafi, the Alignment, Labor and Kadima in the Knesset, and led Alignment and Labor.

Peres first succeeded Yitzhak Rabin as acting prime minister briefly during 1977, before becoming prime minister from 1984 to 1986. As foreign minister under Prime Minister Rabin, Peres engineered the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty, and won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Rabin and Yasser Arafat for the Oslo Accords peace talks with the Palestinian leadership. Peres died in 2016 at Sheba Medical Center after suffering a stroke.

Early life

Shimon Peres was born Szymon Perski, on 2 August 1923, in Wiszniew, Poland (now Vishnyeva, Belarus), to Yitzhak (1896–1982) and Sara (1903–1969, née Meltzer) Perski. The family spoke Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian at home, and Peres learned Polish at school. He then learned to speak English and French. His father was a wealthy timber merchant, later branching out into other commodities; his mother was a librarian. Peres had a younger brother, Gershon. He was related to the American film star Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske), and they were described as first cousins, but Peres said, "In 1952 or 1953, I came to New York ... Lauren Bacall called me, said that she wanted to meet, and we did. We sat and talked about where our families came from, and discovered that we were from the same family ... but I'm not exactly sure what our relation is ... It was she who later said that she was my cousin; I didn't say that".

thumb|Shimon Peres (standing, third from right) with his family,

Peres told Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson that he had been born as a result of a blessing his parents had received from a chassidic rebbe and that he was proud of it. Peres's grandfather, Rabbi Zvi Meltzer, a grandson of Rabbi Chaim Volozhin, had a great impact on his life. In an interview, Peres said: "As a child, I grew up in my grandfather's home. ... I was educated by him. ... My grandfather taught me Talmud. It was not as easy as it sounds. My home was not an observant one. My parents were not Orthodox but I was Haredi. At one point, I heard my parents listening to the radio on the Sabbath and I smashed it." When he was a child, Peres was taken by his father to Radun to receive a blessing from Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (known as "the Chofetz Chaim"). As a child, Peres would later say, "I did not dream of becoming president of Israel. My dream as a boy was to be a shepherd or a poet of stars." He inherited his love of French literature from his maternal grandfather.

At age 20, he was elected to the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed national secretariat, where he was only one of two Mapai party supporters, out of the 12 members. Three years later, he took over the movement and won a majority. The head of Mapai, David Ben-Gurion, and Berl Katznelson began to take an interest in him, and appointed him to Mapai's secretariat.

In 1944, Peres led an illicit expedition into the Negev, then a closed military zone requiring a permit to enter. The expedition, consisting of a group of teenagers, along with a Palmach scout, a zoologist, and an archaeologist, had been funded by Ben-Gurion and planned by Palmach head Yitzhak Sadeh, as part of a plan for future Jewish settlement of the area so as to include it in the Jewish state. The expedition came across a nest of bearded vultures, called peres in Hebrew, and from this Peres took his Hebrew name.

All of Peres's relatives who remained in Wiszniew in 1941 were murdered during the Holocaust, many of them (including Rabbi Meltzer) burned alive in the town's synagogue.

In 1945, Peres married Sonia Gelman, who preferred to remain outside the public eye. They had three children.

In 1946, Peres and Moshe Dayan were chosen as the two youth delegates in the Mapai delegation to the Zionist Congress in Basel.

Director General of Defense (1953–1959)

In 1952, Peres was appointed deputy director general of the Ministry of Defense, and the following year, he was promoted to director general.

In 1955, he testified against Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon in what became known as the Lavon Affair.

Owing to Peres's mediation, Israel acquired the advanced Dassault Mirage III French jet fighter, established the Dimona nuclear reactor and entered into a tri-national agreement with France and the United Kingdom, positioning Israel in what would become the 1956 Suez Crisis. Peres continued as a primary intermediary in the close French-Israeli alliance from the mid-1950s,

Peres is considered to have been the architect of Israel's secret nuclear weapons program in the 1960s, and he stated that, in the 1960s, he recruited Arnon Milchan, an Israeli-American Hollywood film producer, billionaire businessman, and secret arms dealer and intelligence operative, to work for the Israeli Bureau of Scientific Relations (LEKEM or LAKAM), a secret intelligence organization tasked with obtaining military technology and science espionage.

1956 Suez Crisis

thumb|right|upright|Peres (center) with [[Ezer Weizman (right) and King Mahendra of Nepal in 1958]]

From 1954, as director general of the Ministry of Defense, Peres was involved in the planning of the 1956 Suez War, in partnership with France and Britain. Peres was sent by David Ben-Gurion to Paris, where he held secret meetings with the French government. Peres was instrumental in negotiating the Franco-Israeli agreement for a military offensive. In November 1954, Peres visited Paris, where he was received by the French defense minister Marie-Pierre Kœnig, who told him that France would sell Israel any weapons it wanted to buy. By early 1955, France was shipping large amounts of weapons to Israel. During the same visit, Peres informed the French that Israel had decided upon war with Egypt in 1956. Throughout the 1950s, an extraordinarily close relationship existed between France and Israel, characterised by unprecedented cooperation in the fields of defense and diplomacy. For his work as the architect of this relationship, Peres was awarded the highest order of the French, the Legion of Honor, as Commander.

At Sèvres, Peres took part in planning alongside Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, Christian Pineau and Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces General Maurice Challe, and British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd and his assistant Sir Patrick Dean. The British and French would then argue, according to the plan, that Egypt's control of such an important route was too tenuous, and that it needed be placed under Anglo-French management. The agreement at Sèvres was initially described by British prime minister Anthony Eden as the "highest form of statesmanship".

Peres resigned from the 12th government in late May 1965, citing the growing rift between Prime Minister Eshkol and former prime minister Ben-Gurion (Peres was aligned with Ben Gurion). In 1965, Peres and Moshe Dayan were among those that left Mapai with David Ben-Gurion when Ben-Gurion formed a new party, Rafi. The party reconciled with Mapai in 1968, merging to form the Israeli Labor Party. The Labor Party then joined the Alignment (a left-wing alliance). The only Israeli soldier that was killed during the successful rescue operation was its commander, 30-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu, older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Before Rabin ultimately approved the rescue mission, he and Peres were at odds on how to proceed. Rabin was open to acquiescing to the terrorists' demands to release forty Palestinian militants if no military option presented itself. Peres, however, felt acquiescing to be a nonstarter, believing it would encourage further terrorism. Rabin initially took steps to begin negotiations with the terrorists, seeing no other option. Peres felt that negotiating with terrorists would, in effect, be a surrender, and thought a rescue operation should be planned.

Peres organized a secret Israel Crisis Committee to come up with a rescue plan. When a plan had been made, he met with commander Netanyahu a number of times. During one of their final private meetings, they both examined maps and went over precise details. Peres later said of Netanyahu's explanation, "My impression was one of exactitude and imagination," saying that Netanyahu seemed confident the operation would succeed with almost no losses.

Shortly after the mission ended, Rabin recounted, "we called into my office seven of our top commanders...I told our friends in uniform that the honor of the Jewish people, their destinies, are challenged and what we are considering is not just a calculated risk in the military sense, but a comparative risk, which exists between surrender to terror and daring rescue stemming from independence."

After the success of the operation, Peres angled to receive some of the credit and adulation, somewhat competing with Rabin for credit. The leadership election was expected to determine who would lead the party into the 1977 Knesset election. This was at moment when Labor was threatened with the prospect of losing its control of government after 28-consecutive years due to the rise of both the right-wing Likud bloc and the centrist Democratic Movement for Change, which were seen as collectively cutting into the Labor Party's support in the upcoming election. At the time, Rabin and Peres presented little policy difference, with Peres being seen as only slightly to the right of Rabin on domestic matters. Instead of positioning himself in contrast to the incumbent Rabin on policy, Peres instead capitalized off of the political atmosphere and staked his candidacy largely on an argument that the Labor Party needed to satisfy the nation's desire for change by choosing a new leader for itself. Peres made himself a candidate to replace him as the new Labor Party leader. Initially, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon also made himself a candidate. However, Allon and Peres reached an agreement that Peres would appoint Allon to any ministerial position that Allon preferred in exchange from his withdrawal of his candidacy. Following Allon's withdrawal, the Labor Party leadership announced on 10 April 1977 that he had chosen to endorse Peres as the party's new leader. On 11 April 1977, the 815-member Central Committee of the party elected Peres by acclamation as the party's new leader.

In his first election as party leader, Peres led Labor Party and the Alignment coalition to its first ever electoral defeat, and the result afforded the first-place Likud party (led by Menachem Begin) the ability to form a coalition that excluded the left. When the new Likud-led government was formed on 20 June 1977 Peres' time as the unofficial acting prime minister ended.

Labor in opposition (1977–1984)

thumb|right|Prime Minister [[Menachem Begin and Chairman of the Alignment Shimon Peres at the ceremony held by President Yitzhak Navon after the inaugural session of the 10th Knesset, July 1981]]

Once the Likud-led government took power, Labor and the Alignment bloc entered the Knesset opposition for the first time in its history, and Peres assumed the unofficial role of Knesset opposition leader. Through his role within the leadership of this organization, Peres befriended foreign politicians including Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, members of the British Labour Party, and politicians from parts of Africa and Asia.

After handily winning reelection as Labor Party leader in 1980 (defeating a challenge from Rabin, who was attempting a comeback to the leadership),

First premiership (1984–1986)

thumb|Prime Minister Peres delivers a speech in front of [[Ethiopian Jews in Israel|Ethiopian Jewish immigrants, 2 October 1985.]]

Peres was regarded to be a popular prime minister in his two years as premier under the rotation arrangement. During a portion of his premiership, he also held the position of minister of religious affairs.

In 1985, Peres publicly supported the quick pursuit of a military pullback from Beirut to Israel's south Lebanon security belt. A partial Israeli pullback had earlier been approved in 1983 by the Begin-headed Likud-led government that had been in power at that time.

1985 Israel Economic Stabilization Plan

A major domestic policy decision of Peres' first premiership was the implementation of the 1985 Israel Economic Stabilization Plan.

By 1985, Israel's economic fortunes were looking dire, with immense and quickly rising inflation (Israel was experiencing hyperinflation), a government budget deficit equal to between twelve and fifteen percent of the nation's GDP and national debt equal to 220% of the nation's GDP, and Israel's foreign currency reserves were quickly dissipating.

Peres was initially hesitant to take the drastic measures that he ultimately would pursue, as they had the strong potential of proving unpopular and came with a risk of potentially creating a drastic increase in unemployment.

Minister of Foreign Affairs (1986–1988)

As per the rotation arrangement, after Peres' two years as prime minister he and Shamir traded places in 1986. Shamir became prime minister of the new twenty-second government of Israel and Peres became foreign minister as well as the designated acting prime minister of Israel.

Minister of Finance (1988–1990)

In 1988 the Alignment, led by Peres, suffered another narrow defeat. This came despite the fact that polling in 1988 showed Peres to be the most popular politician in the nation. Peres agreed to renew the grand coalition with the Likud, this time conceding the premiership to Shamir for the entire term. In the grand coalition unity government of 1988–90 (the twenty-third government of Israel), Peres served as minister of finance and also continued to be the designated acting prime minister of Israel.

Return to opposition (1990–1992)

"The dirty trick"

Peres and the Alignment finally left the government in 1990, after "the dirty trick" – a failed bid by Peres to form a narrow government based on a coalition of the Alignment, small leftist factions and ultra-orthodox parties. Peres' hope had been to create a Labor-led government that would be focused on peace talks with Palestine. Likud had declined proposals by the United States for Israel and Palestine to initiate what would have been the first peace talks between the two sides. Peres' longtime intra-party rival, Yizhak Rabin, had opposed to overthrowing the Likud-led coalition government. Peres remained active in politics, however.

Oslo peace process with Palestine

thumb|Peres signing Oslo I on 13 September 1993

Rabin's 1992 campaign for Labor had primarily been run on the idea of negotiating peace with the Palestinians. This campaign had succeeded as a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was popular among the Israeli public at the time. The twenty-fifth government of Israel was arguably more pro-peace government than any previous Israeli government.

thumb|[[Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat receiving the Nobel Peace Prize following the Oslo Accords]]

In 1994, in recognition of the Oslo Accords, Peres, Rabin and Arafat were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2002, a number of members of the Norwegian committee that awards the annual Nobel Peace Prize would state they regretted that Mr. Peres's prize could not be recalled. Because he had not acted to prevent Israel's re-occupation of Palestinian territory, he had not lived up to the ideals he expressed when he accepted the prize, and he was involved in human rights abuses.

Negotiations on further terms continued, with Peres continuing to be an integral player. On 28 September 1995, Rabin and Arafat jointly signed a second major agreement, which has popularly been referred to as "Oslo II". On 14 November 1995, the Labor Party confirmed Peres as its new leader, which thereby cleared the last formality before he could be invited by President Ezer Weizman to form a new government. On 15 November 1995, Peres was invited by to form a new government. On 21 November, Peres signed a coalition agreement between Labor, Meretz and Yiud (which had been members of Rabin's government), which was formally approved by the Knesset the next day, establishing a new government with Peres as prime minister. Peres had called the elections early because of promising polls. His lead in the polls began to decrease after the Jaffa Road bus bombings on 25 February 1996. However, even in the last month before the election, he enjoyed a reduced leading margin of around five percent. which was triggered by Hezbollah Katyusha rockets fired into Israel in response to the killing of two Lebanese by an IDF missile. Israel conducted massive air raids and extensive shelling in southern Lebanon. 106 Lebanese civilians died in the shelling of Qana, when a UN compound was hit in an Israeli shelling.

During his term, Peres promoted the use of the internet in Israel and created the first website of an Israeli prime minister. Barak rebuffed Peres' attempt to secure the position of party president.

Minister of Regional Cooperation (1999–2001)

In 1999, Ehud Barak was elected prime minister and formed a Labor-lead government. He appointed Peres (who was seen as a political rival of Barak) to the minor post of minister of regional cooperation. The position also did not come with any government funding. For nearly all of time in this position Peres was sidelined, finding himself disallowed from playing a major role within the government.

On 1 November 2000, amid the Second Intifada, Peres met in the Gaza Strip with Arafat on behalf of the Israeli government. The two agreed to terms of a truce in the early hours of the following morning.

After the resignation of Ezer Weizman, Peres ran in the 2000 Israeli presidential election, seeking to be elected by members of the Knesset to a seven-year term as Israel's president (a ceremonial head of state position which usually authorizes the selection of Prime Minister). However, he lost to Likud candidate Moshe Katsav. Katsav's victory was regarded to be in reaction to the perceived indications that Peres intended to use the presidency to provide his support to the increasingly unpopular peace processes that Barak's government was pursuing. His defeat was considered a significant upset, as he had been regarded as a heavy front-runner to win the Knesset vote. The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times wrote that his defeat appeared to spell the end of Peres' long political career.

There was consideration given later that year to Peres potentially seeking the premiership again. On 20 November 2000, amid polls showing him to be in a virtual-tie with Ariel Sharon, an aide of Peres told the media that he would run in the 2001 direct election for prime minister. Peres himself told lawmakers that he intended to run. Despite this, Peres did not become a candidate. In January 2001, there was some talk among Cabinet members that it would be best for Peres to be the candidate of the left. However, this did not happen. In early January 2001, in a joint television appearance with Barak that promoted the government's intent to work towards peace, Peres told the media that his own goal was, "not to become prime minister", but was instead, "to do the best for the state of Israel."

Vice Prime Minister (2005)

thumb|Peres in 2005

Peres led the Labor Party into a coalition with Sharon once more, reaching an agreement the end of 2004, and entering the party into the thirtieth government of Israel in January 2005. This came after the Sharon's support of "disengagement" from Gaza presented a diplomatic program that Labor could support. Peres received 40% of the vote to Peretz's 42.4%.

Labor withdrew from the unity government on 23 November 2005. On 30 November 2005 Peres announced that he was leaving the Labor Party to support Ariel Sharon and his new Kadima party. Labor reportedly tried to woo Peres to rejoin them. However, he announced that he supported Olmert and would remain with Kadima. Peres had previously announced his intention not to run in the March 2006 elections, but changed his mind. and because of a law that, due to him having switched parties, would have prevented him from running for the next Knesset if he remained an incumbent member of the Knesset. By that time, he had served in the Knesset for more than forty-six consecutive years.

Peres was soon elected back to the Knesset in the 2006 election, this time as a member of Kadima. After the new Kadima-led thirty-first government was formed, Peres was given the role of vice prime minister and minister for the development of the Negev, Galilee and Regional Economy. while 23 objected. He resigned from his role as a member of the Knesset the same day, having been a member since November 1959 (except for a three-month period in early 2006), the longest serving in Israeli political history. Peres was sworn in as president on 15 July 2007.

Presidential elections

{| class=wikitable

!colspan=9|2000 Israeli presidential election

!colspan=2 rowspan=2 |Party

!colspan=1 rowspan=2 |Candidate

!colspan=2 |First round

!colspan=2 |Second round

!Votes

| style="background:#1f5aa5|

| Likud

| Moshe Katsav

| align="right" | 60

| align="right" | 50

| align="right" | 63

| align="right" | 52.5

| style="background:#0297EA" |

| One Israel

| Shimon Peres

| align="right" | 57

| align="right" | 47.5

| align="right" | 57

| align="right" | 47.5

| colspan="2" bgcolor="darkgray" |

| Abstaining

| align="right" | 3

| align="right" | 2.5

| colspan="2" bgcolor="darkgray" |

| colspan=3| Total

| align="right" | 120

| align="right" | 100

| align="right" | 120

| align="right" | 100

{| class="wikitable"

! colspan="9" |2007 Israeli presidential election

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" |Party

! colspan="1" rowspan="2" |Candidate

! colspan="2" |First round

! colspan="2" |Second round

!Votes

| style="background:#32127A" |

| Kadima

| Shimon Peres

| align="right" | 58

| align="right" | 52.73

| align="right" | 86

| align="right" | 78.90

| style="background:#1f5aa5" |

| Likud

| Reuven Rivlin

| align="right" | 31

| align="right" | 28.18

| colspan="2" bgcolor="darkgray" |

| style="background:#EE1C25" |

| Labor

| Colette Avital

| align="right" | 21

| align="right" | 19.09

| colspan="2" bgcolor="darkgray" |

| Against

| colspan="2" bgcolor="darkgray" |

| align="right" | 23

| align="right" | 19.10

| colspan="3" | Total

| align="right" | 110

| align="right" | 100

| align="right" | 109

| align="right" | 100

Party leadership elections

Notes

References

External links

Official Israeli Presidency website
Official channel on YouTube
The day Peres became a Sheikh!
Peres Center for Peace
Biography at the Encyclopædia Britannica
with the Nobel Lecture
Shimon Peres biography at the Jewish Virtual Library
Column archive at The Guardian
BBC – Sharon seals new Israel coalition
Peres's metaphysical propensity to lose by Matthew Wagner, published in The Jerusalem Post, 10 November 2005.
Former Labor Leader Shimon Peres Heading For Sharon's new party – recorded Report from IsraCast.
Shimon Peres speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations about the Israel/Lebanon conflict on 31 July 2006
Shimon Peres speaks at Cornell University – "A Conversation with Shimon Peres"
"Presidency rounds off 66-year career" by Amiram Barkat, Haaretz
President Peres's address to the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, 24 September 2008
by Leon Charney on The Leon Charney Report
by Leon Charney on The Leon Charney Report

Early life

Director General of Defense (1953–1959)

1956 Suez Crisis

Labor in opposition (1977–1984)

First premiership (1984–1986)

1985 Israel Economic Stabilization Plan

Minister of Foreign Affairs (1986–1988)

Minister of Finance (1988–1990)

Return to opposition (1990–1992)

"The dirty trick"

Oslo peace process with Palestine

Minister of Regional Cooperation (1999–2001)

Vice Prime Minister (2005)

Presidential elections

Party leadership elections

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links