Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres, born in 1923, president of Israel (2007- ), prime minister of Israel (1984-1986, 1995-1996), and cofounder of the Israel Labor Party in 1968. Peres has been a major proponent of peace between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries.

Born Shimon Persky in Vishneva, Poland (now part of Belarus), Peres emigrated with his family to British-controlled Palestine, now Israel, in 1934. He joined Hanoar Haoved, the youth movement associated with the General Federation of Labor, and studied at the Ben-Shemen Agricultural School. His interest in agriculture and community service led him to join Kibbutz Alumot, a collective farm settlement in the Jordan Valley where he worked in numerous capacities, including shepherd, field worker, weekly newspaper columnist, and administrator. In 1943 Peres was elected to the secretariat of Hanoar Haoved. Through his travels around the country to set up new branches and settlement groups, he established himself as a leader.

In 1947 Peres joined the Haganah, the major underground Jewish military organization and forerunner of today’s Israeli Defense Forces. That same year, David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Haganah and soon to be the first prime minister of Israel, appointed Peres as head of Haganah’s manpower, and then of its arms procurement. In 1948, during the War of Independence that followed Israel’s proclamation as a sovereign state, Peres served as head of the new state’s naval services. In 1952 he was appointed deputy director-general of the ministry of defense; within a year he was promoted to director-general. He established close military cooperation with the French government, which helped him develop Israel’s government weapons industry and establish Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

In 1959 Peres was elected to a seat in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, as a member of Mapai, the Israel Workers Party. He served as deputy minister of defense where he helped advance Israel’s arms industry. In 1965, when Ben-Gurion formed Rafi, the Israel Workers’ List Party, Peres followed his mentor into the new party. He garnered support for the party, obtaining both volunteers and money, and redrew the party’s manifesto to include electoral reform, a nonpartisan approach to elections, and goals for scientific, industrial, and technological progress. In 1968 Peres broke with Ben-Gurion and helped facilitate the merger of most of Rafi’s members with Mapai and other pro-labor groups into the united Israel Labor Party.

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In 1968 Peres was again reelected to the Knesset, this time as a member of the newly united Israel Labor Party. He held a number of ministerial positions under Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-1974). With the resignation of Meir’s government in 1974, Peres ran for party leader, but he was narrowly defeated by Yitzhak Rabin, the former chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces and a hero of the Six-Day War (1967). Ranking second in the party to Rabin, Peres was given the senior cabinet position of minister of defense. With spirits low following the traumatic Arab-Israeli War of 1973 in which Egypt and Syria, subsequently aided by Jordan and Iraq, launched a surprise attack on Israel, Peres helped rebuild the morale in the army. His policy of tolerating illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank, however, caused friction with Rabin.

In 1977 Rabin was forced to take a leave of absence from his position as party leader and prime minister because of a bank scandal involving his wife. Peres became the unofficial party leader, but the Labor Party was defeated in the elections that year by the rival Likud bloc. Peres then turned to rebuilding the Labor Party. He was unanimously elected to the post of party chairman in 1977 by the party’s central committee. As party chairman he was able to rebuild Labor’s financial reserves.

Peres also worked with diplomats to negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt. He met with Anwar al-Sadat, the president of Egypt, numerous times, and was a member of the Israeli parliamentary delegation to the signing of the 1979 Camp David Accords by Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin of the Likud. The Camp David Accords became the basis for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Begin’s popularity after the peace treaty along with his destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osiraq, Iraq, helped Likud defeat Peres’s Labor Party again in 1981.

In the 1984 elections, Peres led the Labor Party to a narrow victory. Since neither Labor nor the Likud could form a majority of the 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament, the two parties formed a National Unity government. Peres served as prime minister for the first two years, and as foreign minister under Likud prime minister Yitzhak Shamir for the next two years. During his term as prime minister, Peres had two major successes. First, he was able to withdraw Israeli troops from most of Lebanon, where they had become involved in a controversial guerrilla war. Second, with the help of a special $1.5-billion loan from the United States, he managed to stabilize the Israeli economy, reducing inflation dramatically. During his time as foreign minister, Peres worked to bring peace to the Middle East. He was unable, however, to make significant progress. Although Labor was willing to give up some of Israel’s land in the interest of peace, Likud was opposed to the idea. Peres served as finance minister under Prime Minister Shamir from 1988 until 1990, when the National Unity government collapsed because it was unable to resolve its ongoing dispute over the Arab-Israeli peace process.

In 1992 Peres lost the leadership of the Labor Party to Rabin, who led the party to victory in that year’s elections. Rabin appointed Peres as foreign minister, and the two worked closely to achieve a peace agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a political body representing Palestinian Arabs in their attempt to reclaim territory from Israel. An agreement was signed in 1993, and in 1994 Peres, Rabin, and PLO leader Yasir Arafat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Peres also worked to reach an agreement with Jordan on a peace treaty, which was signed in 1994.

In 1995 Rabin was assassinated and Peres was unanimously elected Labor Party leader and became prime minister. Peres proclaimed his desire to continue the peace process, declaring peace with Syria to be his top priority. In 1996 he met with leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinians, as well as United States president Bill Clinton, to explore new possibilities for Middle East peace. Peres also broke new ground to combat the rift that had grown between Israel’s secular and religious Jews after Rabin’s assassination. Rabin had been assassinated by a religious Jew who justified the murder on religious grounds, saying that Rabin planned to give away territory vital to Israel’s security and religious heritage in exchange for peace. To help heal the breach, Peres appointed a moderate rabbi, Yehudah Amital, as minister without portfolio—an official position with jurisdiction not limited to one specific area—in his new government.

In March of 1996 peace talks stalled after Peres was forced to take action against Palestinians in the West Bank in retaliation for a series of suicide bombings that left over 60 dead in Israel in less than two weeks. In an attempt to protect his country, Peres authorized Israeli soldiers to arrest and cordon off the homes of bombing suspects, as well as to seal off West Bank villages and towns to prevent Palestinian movement. To promote extra security, he suspended the employment of Palestinians by Israelis, and bolstered army and police patrols in Jerusalem. Nonetheless, final status peace talks began on schedule in May. At the end of the month, Peres narrowly lost a bid for reelection to Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Peres did not seek reelection as leader of the Labor Party in 1997. He was succeeded in that post by Ehud Barak, who was elected prime minister in 1999. Peres joined Barak’s cabinet as minister of regional cooperation. In July 2000 Peres ran for the largely ceremonial position of president of Israel but lost to Likud candidate Moshe Katsav. Peres joined Likud leader Ariel Sharon’s cabinet as foreign minister in 2001, but resigned the following year in protest of government financial policy.

Peres resumed the leadership of the Labor Party in 2003. In early 2005 he led Labor into a coalition with Likud in support of Sharon’s plan to unilaterally withdraw Israeli forces and settlements from the Gaza Strip. Several extreme right-wing parties withdrew from Likud’s coalition in protest. Peres became deputy premier under Sharon in the new alliance. In November 2005, however, Peres unexpectedly lost the leadership of the Labor Party to Amir Peretz, the head of Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation. In response Peres resigned from the Labor Party and threw his support to a new centrist party formed by Sharon, who resigned from Likud. After Sharon suffered a stroke and was succeeded by Ehud Olmert, Peres became a vice premier in Olmert’s coalition government. In 2007 he became the president of Israel, a largely ceremonial post.

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