Shimon Peres, who signed Oslo accords, dies

occupied jerusalem — Shimon Peres, who died on Wednesday aged 93, was an Israeli elder statesman, Nobel laureate and two-time prime minister who spearheaded peace efforts with the Palestinians after breaking with his hawkish past.

He suffered a major stroke on September 13 and had been hospitalised near Tel Aviv since then.

Peres, who also served as president, was a towering figure in Israeli politics for decades and the last of the country’s founding fathers. Beyond his accomplishments in the public eye, he was seen as a driving force in the development of Israel’s undeclared nuclear programme. He was particularly lauded abroad, and his lavish 80th birthday party was attended by ex-presidents Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev. Film director Woody Allen sent greetings “from a bad Jew to a very great Jew.”

He once confided that the secret to his longevity was daily exercise, eating little and drinking one or two glasses of good wine.

The highlight of his career came in 1994, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords with the Palestinians.

The 1993 accords were hailed as historic, leading to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and parametres that were supposed to lead to peace in five years.

It was sealed with a symbolic handshake between Rabin and Arafat in Washington. Peres was foreign minister at the time and played a key role.

Peres held nearly every major office in a career spanning five decades. He was among those instrumental in establishing the state of Israel, alongside its first prime minister David Ben-Gurion and other figures like Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan.

Born in Poland in 1923, Peres emigrated to what was then British mandatory Palestine when he was 11. He joined the Zionist struggle in the 1940s. —