‘The world is a little darker without him’
World leaders mourn Peres’s passing
Pope Francis was so excited to meet Shimon Peres during his first trip to Israel in 2014 that he sent him a special greeting from the air even before he landed.
When US Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Israel earlier this year, his first stop was the office of Israel’s veteran politician whose diplomatic career had spanned over half a century.
At the time, Biden reminisced about how he had first met Peres in the 1970s. His story was not unusual. Peres had ties to many world leaders and the countries they represented, with a history that often had begun decades earlier.
It was not just his smile, warm handshake and memories of the past that made a pilgrimage to his office a diplomatic rite of passage for any international dignitary.
His deep conviction that peace was possible in a region of parched hope where violence reigns left his visitors with a sense of optimism that a new Middle East was still possible.
News of his death on Wednesday at age 93 made headlines around the world, as heads of state and top diplomats sent condolences to his family and to the country for its loss.
“For so many years, Shimon Peres was the soul of Israel. The world is a little darker without him in it,” Biden said.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “He was a figure of towering moral credibility, dedicated to finding the path to peace and security among his neighbors.
“To everyone he met, he was a person of decency and kindness, who spoke of honor and reconciliation even in times of trouble and strife,” he said.
Many recalled his role as the architect of the Oslo Accords.
US national security adviser Susan Rice noted that he first suffered what would be a fatal stroke on September 13, the date on which, 23 years earlier, he signed the Oslo I Accord on the White House lawn.
To his dying day, Peres always believed that peace was possible with the Palestinians and neighboring countries.
In his memory, many world leaders urged Israelis and Palestinians to renew the peace process.
European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said: “Peres has never lost hope in peace and has never stopped working to turn hope into reality.
“Even in the darkest moments, his wit, his irony, his obstinate pursuit of dialogue have been a source of inspiration for many around the world, including myself,” Mogherini said.
“President Peres believed that the best way to serve the State of Israel and to deliver security to the Israeli people was through peace with the Palestinians.
“We can only honor his memory with a daily commitment to reconciliation, preserving and advancing his vision for a two-state solution,” Mogherini said.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that Peres was a “good partner of the UN, eager to see Israel contribute to the work of the international community.
“I met Mr. Peres on many occasions and always benefited from his views. Even in the most difficult hours, he remained an optimist about the prospects for reconciliation and peace.
“As he once said at the UN: ‘The time has come to comprehend that the real triumph is in the harvest of peace, not in the seeds of another war. When we replace war maps with peace maps, we will discover the differences were minimal,’” Ban said.
“May his spirit of determination guide us as we work to ensure peace, security and dignity for Israelis, Palestinians and all the peoples of the region,” Ban added.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President François Hollande all issued statements lauding Peres as a statesman and a man of peace.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said: “The world has lost a great statesman, Israel has lost one of its founding fathers, and Germany has lost a highly esteemed friend and partner.
“In 1986, he was the first Israeli prime minister to visit the then-divided city of Berlin. In 2010, he addressed the German Bundestag, saying: ‘The bridge built across the ravine was built by painful hands and shoulders that were carrying the burden of memory. It rests on strong moral foundations.’
“This year, Shimon Peres said he regretted having dreamed too small – and he was quite a dreamer.
“We shall miss him,” Steinmeier added.
Biden said that Peres “was truly a force of nature. When he talked, everyone listened. And later, long after he’d left the room, you remembered what he said. It crept into your soul and stayed with you.
“Each time I met with him, I was struck anew by his incredible compassion, his boundless energy and his ceaseless curiosity. Even at 93, Shimon was still looking for the next big idea – the next dream to bring to life.
“He was part of that exceptional generation of founders – the men and women who recognized the necessity for a Jewish State of Israel and then willed it into existence, despite overwhelming odds,” Biden said.
“There was never any inevitability to the success of Israel. Only the iron-clad determination of those who made it so: Ben-Gurion, Meir, Begin, Rabin and the youngest among them – a kid still in his early 20s named Shimon Peres, who would go on to dedicate his life and his service to Israel for 70 more years.
“The last time I sat with Shimon, back in March at his Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, he said: ‘We gave up war, because war led nowhere.’
“His loss will be felt not only in Israel but all over the world – in every heart he touched, including mine,” Biden said.
Rice briefly recounted the long journey Peres had taken, from an Eastern European shtetl to a kibbutz and onward to the office of prime minister and then president.
“He was a dreamer and a doer, working to make the desert bloom and build the State of Israel brick by brick.
“He was a warrior who helped secure Israel against its adversaries and a peacemaker who knew, as he liked to say, that there are no hopeless situations, only hopeless people,” Rice said.
“He was also, as he would happily remind you, an excellent cow-milker and shepherd in his kibbutznik days.
“The unbreakable alliance between the United States and Israel stands as an enduring tribute to president Peres’s years of diplomacy and eloquent advocacy on Israel’s behalf,” Rice added.
“As the inventor of the eminently quotable ‘Peres-ism,’ president Peres once observed that ‘Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist,’” Rice said.
Kerry said that Peres “embodied the friendship and values that are at the heart of the US-Israel relationship, and stood at the forefront of efforts to forge and sustain the unshakable bonds between our countries.”
He recalled the three decades of their relationship and said he had cherished their time together.
“He was a great listener who left a legacy of unmatched eloquence. I will never forget sitting near Shimon at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Library and watching as he scrawled just a few notes on a small piece of paper, before delivering some of the most stirring words about peace that I had ever heard,” Kerry said.
“Shimon once said that a person’s ultimate goal should be ‘to find a cause that’s larger than yourself and then to give your life to it.’ Shimon embodied this statement. His cause was the independence and security of the State of Israel; his cause was peace for the Jewish people in his community’s ancient homeland; his cause was an Israel that would always be pluralistic, innovative, safe, strong and free – and he certainly gave every day of his life to that high goal,” Kerry said.
Danielle Ziri and Michael Wilner contributed to this story.