Former president and prime minister Shimon Peres has died. The 93 year-old was hospitalized in Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer two weeks ago after a massive stroke and never really recovered. After a slight improvement, his condition dramatically deteriorated and he died peacefully in his sleep at about 3am this morning, surrounded by his family.
Peres was one of Israel's founding fathers and greatest statesmen. Born in a part of Poland in 1923 that is now Belarus, Szymon Perski immigrated to Eretz Yisrael in 1934 with his parents. He became a member of the Labor Zionist Youth movement and eventually a close aide of Israel's first prime minister David Ben Gurion. He was the architect of Israel's defense industries and defense deterrents as director general of the Defense Ministry from 1954.
He was first elected to the Knesset as a member of Mapai (the forerunner of Labor) in 1959. In 1969, he became Minister of Immigrant Absorption and the following year Minister of Transport and Communications. He became Defense Minister and in 1977 lost the leadership contest of the Labor party to his great rival Yitzhak Rabin but became acting Prime Minister in 1977, after Rabin resigned due to his wife's unreported foreign currency account.
Peres lost the elections in 1977 and 1981 but became prime minister in 1984, in a rotation government with Yitzhak Shamir's Likud after the elections were inconclusive. As Prime Minister for two years and then a Finance Minister, Peres is credited with withdrawing Israel from most of Lebanon and stabilizing the inflation-ridden economy.
He narrowly lost the election in 1988 but continued as Finance Minister in a coalition government. He then lost the leadership to Rabin who won the 1992 elections and Peres served as his Foreign Minister. After the Oslo peace accords a year later, Peres, Rabin and PLO leader Yassir Arafat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Peres became Prime Minister in 1995 after Rabin's assassination but his inability to win elections and unpopularity with the non-Ashkenazi electorate recurred in 1996, and he was beaten by the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu.
He became Foreign Minister in the National Unity government led by Ariel Sharon during the Second Intifada. He left the Labor Party for Sharon's Kadima and served as Deputy Prime Minister in Ehud Olmert's government. Between 2007 and 2014, he served as President of the State of Israel before finally retiring from politics aged 91.
For many years considered a hawk, he became a devout dove from the 1990s onwards. Shunned by the right at home, he was a popular statesman overseas and a leading advocate of a two state solution with the Palestinians. He worked tirelessly for coexistence through the Peres Center for Peace, which he founded.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 28, 2016
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