(JERUSALEM, ISRAEL) Former Israeli president and elder statesman Shimon Peres, a joint victor of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize and an influential figure in Israeli politics for 70 years, died in hospital on Wednesday aged 93, two weeks after suffering a massive stroke. He was a father figure not only to his beloved country of Israel, but also to me, because he was what I imagined my father would have been like. Two years later he became the first Israeli president to speak to the legislature of a Muslim country, addressing the Turkish parliament.
Advertisement
The peace agreements – signed in Washington in 1993 and Taba, Egypt in 1995, – foresaw the creation of a Palestinian state, and were named after the Norwegian capital where the two sides launched eight months of secret negotiations in which Peres played a key role.
But in the 1990s, Peres became a passionate peace advocate, and he supported the Oslo Accords. Well into his 90s, Peres still insisted he would live to see the day when peace would come.
Peace, however, doomed his political career. Peres continued to promote peaceful coexistence after Oslo.
Here is Shimon Peres during a Ted Talk in 2015. During the Fifties, Peres founded Israel’s clandestine nuclear programme before entering politics in 1959.
Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, Portuguese Foreign Minister Augosto Santos Silva, and Singapore’s deputy prime minister will also arrive in Israel to pay their respects on Friday. He did so much to protect our people. “He worked until his last days toward reconciliation with our neighbors for a better future for our children”. “This soon cemented the special relationship between Canada and Israel, and he paid tribute to Canada on his 2012 visit when he said Canada is “an extraordinary friend” and ‘never indifferent, never neutral'”. Shimon made us look far into the future, and we loved him.
Peres was born Shimon Persky on August 16, 1923, in the small village of Vishniewa, Poland, to a merchant family.
Peres was often referred to as one of Ben-Gurion’s “old boys”, and the founding prime minister appointed his protégé director of the new country’s naval services.
“With the passing of Shimon Peres, Israel has lost a leader who championed its security, prosperity, and limitless possibilities from its birth to his last day on earth”. After that, a special committee was to meet to prepare arrangements for a funeral that many global dignitaries and leaders from around the world are expected to attend. Sonya Peres died in 2011 at 87.
Peres built Israel’s defense industry from scratch in the 1950s, negotiated Israel’s biggest arms and technology deals and prioritized security above all else. He promoted Peres to director-general of the Defense Ministry in 1952, aged just 29. He would later turn against the goals of Jewish settlement in the West Bank as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
In 1988, Alignment with Peres at its head was defeated by Likud.
Pope Francis met with the former president and prime minister at the Vatican on several occasions, the most recent being June 20.
As prime minister (twice); as minister of defense, foreign affairs, finance and transportation; and, until 2014, as president, Peres never left the public stage during Israel’s seven decades.
Peres’ son, Chemi, confirmed his death Wednesday morning to reporters gathered at the hospital where Peres had been treated since suffering a stroke on September 13.
He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.
He also personally thanked then-prime minister Stephen Harper for being a staunch friend to Israel. It is a photograph I call “the Middle East Without Words”.
Relegated to the political wilderness, he created his non-governmental Peres Center for Peace that raised funds for cooperation and development projects involving Israel, the Palestinians and Arab nations.
For his part, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, sent a message to the Peres family expressing his sadness and regret in losing “a partner in courageous peacemaking”.
Advertisement
Peres, who frequently drew on historical allusions, thought of himself as philosopher more than a politician. In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor.
