Built up Israel’s defense and sought peace
SHIMON PERES Aug. 16, 1923 - Sept. 28, 2016
JERUSALEM — At every corner of Israel’s tumultuous history, Shimon Peres was there.
He was a young aide to the nation’s founding fathers when the country declared independence in 1948, and he played a key role in turning Israel into a military power. He was part of the negotiations that sealed the first IsraeliPalestinian peace accord, garnering a Nobel Peace Prize. He was welcomed like royalty in world capitals. But only at the end of a political career stretching more than 60 years did Mr. Peres get what he truly wanted: admiration from his own people. He died at 93 early Wednesday.
Mr. Peres began a new chapter at 83, assuming the nation’s presidency aafter a scandal that forced his predecessor to step down. The job cemented his transformation from down-and-dirty political operator to elder statesman.
“After such a long career, let me just say something: My appetite to manage is over. My inclination to dream and to envisage is greater,” Mr. Peres told The Associated Press in an interview on July 15, 2007, moments before he was sworn in as president.
He said he would not allow his age, or the constraints of a largely ceremonial office, to slow him down. “I’m not in a hurry to pass away,” Mr. Peres said. “The day will come that I shall not forget to pass away. But until then, I’m not going to waste my life.”
As president, he tirelessly jetted around the world to represent his country at conferences, ceremonies and international gatherings.
He also became Israel’s moderate face at a time when the nation was led by hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He sought to reassure the international community that Israel seeks peace, despite concerns over continued settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and the paralysis of negotiations under Mr. Netanyahu. Still, while Mr. Peres never tired of speaking of peace, he tended to avoid strident criticism of Netanyahu.
It was his 1994 Nobel Prize that established Mr. Peres’ man-ofpeace image. He proudly displayed the prize — which he shared with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat — on the desk of his presidential office.
As foreign minister, Mr. Peres secretly brokered the historic Oslo interim peace accords with the Palestinians, signed at the
White House on Sept. 13, 1993.
Accepting the award, he told assembled dignitaries that “war, as a method of conducting human affairs, is in its death throes, and the time has come to bury it.”
Despite the assassination of Rabin, the breakdown of peace talks, a second Palestinian uprising in 2000, wars in Lebanon and Gaza, and Mr. Netanyahu’s continued re-elections, Mr. Peres maintained his insistence that peace was right around the corner. “I’m sure I shall see peace in my lifetime. Even if I should have to extend my life for a year or two, I won’t hesitate,” he said in a 2013 interview marking his 90th birthday.
Mr. Peres was born Shimon Perski on Aug. 2, 1923 in Vishniev, then part of Poland and now in Belarus. He moved to pre-state Palestine in 1934 with his family, where he changed his surname to Peres, or songbird, in Hebrew. Relatives who remained in Poland, including his grandfather, a prominent rabbi, were killed when Nazis set a synagogue on fire during the Holocaust.
Still in his 20s, Mr. Peres rose quickly through the ranks of Israel’s pre-state leadership, and served as a top aide to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, after independence in 1948. Mr. Peres once called Ben-Gurion “the greatest Jew of our time.”
At 29, he served as director of Israel’s Defense Ministry, and is credited with arming Israel’s military almost from scratch. He later worked with the French to develop Israel’s nuclear program, which today is widely believed to include a large arsenal of bombs. Still, he suffered throughout his political career from the fact that he never wore an army uniform or fought in a war.
Mr. Peres was elected to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in 1959, serving in nearly all major Cabinet posts over his long career. As finance minister, he imposed an emergency plan to halt triple-digit inflation in the 1980s. He also was an early supporter of the Jewish settler movement in the West Bank, a position he would later abandon.
But he had trouble breaking into the prime minister’s post, the top job in Israeli politics. He was hampered by a reputation among the public and fellow politicians as both a utopian dreamer and a political schemer.
He ran for prime minister in five general elections, losing four and tying one, in 1984, when he shared the job in a rotation with his rival Yitzhak Shamir.
His well-tailored, necktied appearance, swept-back gray hair and penchant for artists and intellectuals seemed to separate him from his more informal countrymen. He never lost his Polish accent, making him a target for mimicry.
After Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish ultranationalist opposed to Israel’s peace moves, Mr. Peres became acting prime minister.
But he failed to capitalize on the widespread sympathy for the fallen leader and lost a razor-thin election the next year to Mr. Netanyahu.
In one famous incident, an angry Mr. Peres rhetorically asked a gathering of his Labor Party whether he was a “loser.” Resounding calls of “yes” rained down on him.
Mr. Peres would later blame a wave of suicide bombings for his defeat. He described his visit to the scene of a deadly bus explosion in Jerusalem, where people started screaming “killer” and “murderer” at him. “I knew that I lost the election,” he said.
He suffered another humiliation in 2000 when he ran for the presidency, a largely ceremonial position elected by Parliament. Mr. Peres believed he had wrapped up the election, but the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party broke a promise to him and switched its support to Likud candidate Moshe Katsav. Mr. Peres was a loser once again.
Even so, he refused to quit. In 2001, he took the post of foreign minister in a unity government led by his rival Ariel Sharon, serving for 20 months before Labor withdrew from the coalition. In Mr. Peres’ final political defeat, Labor overthrew him as party leader in 2005, choosing instead the littleknown Amir Peretz.
Mr. Peres subsequently followed Sharon into a new party, Kadima, serving as vice-premier and maintaining that post under Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert.
He was able to attain the presidency when Katsav was forced to step down weeks before his term ended to face rape charges. Katsav was later convicted and sent to prison.
Seeking to stabilize the cherished institution, parliament turned to Mr. Peres and elected him president.
Mr. Peres cultivated an image as a grandfatherly figure, frequently inviting groups of children and teens to the presidential residence. He embraced social media and promoted Israel’s high-tech industry in meetings with top officials at Google, Facebook and other major companies.