State funeral:
Shimon Peres, Israel’s former president and prime minister, is laid to rest by world leaders.
JERUSALEM — Shimon Peres was laid to rest Friday by dozens of world leaders who praised Israel’s former president and prime minister for pursuing peace with an indefatigable spirit and optimism, even though his vision of a “new Middle East” was never fulfilled.
At a funeral befitting the globe-trotting Peres, speakers including President Obama recalled a seven-decade political career that personified the history of Israel by building its military while also pushing it toward peace.
“He knew better than the cynic that if you look out over the arc of history, human beings should be filled not with fear but with hope,” Obama told the mourners, made up of delegations from 70 countries — an assembly of dignitaries unlikely to be seen in Israel again.
“We gather here today with the knowledge that Shimon never saw his dream of peace fulfilled,” he added. “The region is going through a chaotic time. Threats are forever present. And yet, he did not stop dreaming and he did not stop working.”
Peres, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 with former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, died Wednesday at age 93.
Among the mourners were French President Francois Hollande, Britain’s Prince Charles, German President Joachim Gauck and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Despite the stalemate in peace talks, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sat in the front row alongside other world leaders. Representatives from Egypt and Jordan also were present.
Bill Clinton was president when Peres negotiated a historic interim peace accord with the Palestinians in 1993. In his remarks Friday, he said Peres “started life as Israel’s brightest student, became its best teacher and ended up its biggest dreamer.”
Peres led Israel through some of its most defining moments: creating what is believed to be a nuclear arsenal in the 1950s; disentangling its troops from Lebanon and rescuing its economy from tripledigit inflation in the 1980s; and guiding a skeptical nation into peace talks with the Palestinians in the 1990s.
A protege of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, Peres served in parliament for nearly half a century, held every major Cabinet post, including defense, finance and foreign affairs, and served three brief stints as prime minister. He was the country’s elder statesman as its ceremonial president between 2007 and 2014.
He also created his non-governmental Peres Center for Peace, which raised funds and ran programs for cooperation and development projects involving Israel, the Palestinians and Arab nations. He was a proponent of Israeli technology and innovation, and gained international recognition for preaching peace and coexistence.
With his passing, Israel lost its final link to its founding generation, giving the funeral a sense of the end of an era. Thousands of mourners viewed Peres’ casket Thursday outside the parliament building.