The head of the Israeli hospital treating former President Shimon Peres says a stroke caused “lots of bleeding”.
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“The 9th President of the State of Israel, Shimon Peres, suffered a major stroke today”, hospital director Yitzhak Kreiss said on late Tuesday evening, “He is being treated by the best doctors in the hospital from across the medical fields”.
Peres, 93, also a former Israeli Prime Minister and a Nobel laureate, is in stable condition, receiving treatment and “is fully conscious”, the office said.
Over a seven-decade career, he held virtually every senior political office in Israel, including three terms as prime minister and stints as foreign and finance minister.
He had remained active since completing his seven-year term as president in 2014, refusing to bow into retirement. He was a joint victor of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize (with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin) for helping to negotiate the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians.
Peres was rushed to the hospital Tuesday after suffering a stroke. His office said Peres received a pacemaker last week.
Long a divisive figure in Israeli politics, Peres finally became one of Israel’s most popular public figures in his later years.
President Reuven Rivlin said in a statement he was “following with concern the updates from the hospital, and pray together with the entire people for my friend Shimon’s recovery”.
Netanyahu said on his twitter account: “Shimon, we all love you”.
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Before converting from a pro-war politicon to a peace-loving dove in 1977, a change of heart he said was a result of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s visit to Israel and subsequent peace treaty with Tel Aviv, Peres said Israel had the right to keep land gained during war, such as the Syrian Golan Heights, in contravention of global law. But he warned that it was far too soon to eulogize his tenacious father.
