The Entire Life of Shimon Peres Was a Message for Israel

Shimon Peres has died at the age of 93. He was one of Israel’s defining political figures and a Nobel peace prize laureate. Peres twice served as prime minister of Israel and later as its ninth president. He had been seriously ill on a respirator in an Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv and died after his condition deteriorated sharply. Peres’ death was formally confirmed on Wednesday morning by his son Chemi in a news conference at the hospital where his father had been treated : "Today with deep sorrow we bid farewell to our beloved father, the ninth president of Israel. Our father’s legacy has always been to look to tomorrow. We were privileged to be part of his private family, but today we sense that the entire nation of Israel and the global community share this great loss. We share this pain together." Within hours of his death, tributes to Peres began from world leaders. Among those who have said they will attend his funeral and burial on Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl on Friday are Barack Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton, as well as Prince Charles and French President François Hollande. In more than six decades of political life, the defining achievement of Shimon Peres was as one of the key architects of the Oslo peace accords, for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1994 with the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Those 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. With Peres’s death, the last of the Oslo trio has now gone. Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist in 1995. Arafat died nine years later. Today, prospects for the peace and two-state solution offered by Oslo seem remote, after the collapse of the peace process in 2014. ~~~~~~ It is impossible to capture Shimon Peres in a few words, or even by reciting the extraordinary list of his achievements -- among the many were : 1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat; 2008 Honorary doctorate of Law from King's College London; 2008 Honorarily appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George; 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama; 2014 United States House of Representatives H.R. 2939 that awarded Peres the Congressional Gold Medal. The bill said that "Congress proclaims its unbreakable bond with Israel." The phenomenon that was Shimon Peres caused the Jerusalem Report news magazine to call him “Israel’s only world-class statesman, perhaps Zionism’s last pragmatic visionary." Peres wrote 11 books, read and wrote poetry voraciously, and could quote from Old Testament prophets, French literature -- he also received the French Legion of Honor medal -- and Chinese philosophy with equal ease. After the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, he bound together a shattered nation. ~~~~~~ The last surviving figure in the Founders of modern Israel, Peres moved from being a hawk to a peacemaker. But, Peres was also disliked and mistrusted by some in Israel who saw him as divisive and "naive." His neighbor and biographer Michael Bar Zohar suggested that despite being one of its strongest proponents, Peres also recognized the failure of Oslo : “The Oslo agreement was not a very big success, not its conception, not its writing, not its partner. It was one of the things he regretted most, but he still stuck to the conviction that Oslo was a great thing and that the ‘new Middle East’ was a new reality despite what was happening around us. He still felt the two-state solution could be implemented although he was critical of the Israeli government about the stalemate in those negotiations and partly the Palestinians as well.” The leader of Israel’s opposition, Knesset member Isaac Herzog, who knew Peres from childhood, first through his father, Chaim Herzog, himself a president of Israel, described Peres as a man who lived his life largely in public : “I was a close confidante of Shimon Peres. My father was a colleague of his and I was also an advisor and an assistant to him as well as a member of government with him. For me he was a teacher and mentor. I think Peres' vision of a two-state solution is alive and kicking. It has problems. Stumbling blocks. But it is still possible...I think the tragedy is both people [Palestinians and Israelis] in majorities want to move to a two-state solution. It is not moving because of politics. But his dream will be implemented.” And, despite his role in the Oslo accords, Palestinians and the wider Arab world saw the legacy of Peres differently. Many have portrayed him as a key figure in early settlement construction and pointed to his role in the 1996 Israeli assault on Lebanon, which saw the deaths of 106 civilians when a UN base where they were sheltering was shelled. But, for most Israelis, Peres will be remembered for a career that intimately tracked the country’s short history. Later in his life, he became one of the country’s most popular public figures, serving a seven-year term as president from 2007-14. As recently as 2015, Peres strongly criticized the direction of the government of Israel’s conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, although not naming Netanyahu. Peres said he believed the values he and Rabin had inherited from Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, were in jeopardy as he defended a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict : “Israel should implement the two-state solution for her own sake, because if we should lose our majority, and today we are almost equal, we cannot remain a Jewish state or a democratic state. That’s the main issue, and to my regret they [the government] do the opposite." ~~~~~~ Born in a largely Jewish town in Poland to relatively wealthy parents, Peres, at the age of 11, and his family followed his father to the British Mandate Palestine in 1934. A protégé of Ben-Gurion, Peres was a founder of the Labor-Zionist Youth Movement and a member of the Hagana Jewish military forces (that later became the Israeli Defense Forces - IDF) before Israel declared independence. As a defense official in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Peres was involved in the establishment in Dimona of Israel’s nuclear reactor. He worked closely with France to provide weapons and French Mirage military aircraft for Israel and to form the Suez offensive with Britain and France against Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, which was stopped by US President Eisenhower. During his long career, Perez occupied almost every significant position in Israeli political life, after becoming director general of Israel’s ministry of defense in his 20s, under Ben-Gurion. First elected to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in 1959 (he served for 48 consecutive years, the longest-serving Knesset member), his cabinet roles included defense, finance and foreign affairs before he served two brief periods as prime minister. Although he ran for prime minister five times between 1977 and 1996, he never won a national election outright. A noted hawk in the 1970s who had deep reservations about territorial compromise with the Palestinians, Peres supported settlement building and the building up of Israel’s military strength. But, in the 1980s he began to move from the centrist political position he occupied towards the peace camp. In his later years, Shimon Peres was seen as a dove, and a strong supporter of peace through economic cooperation. While still opposed, like all mainstream Israeli leaders in the 1970s and early 1980s, to talks with the PLO, he distanced himself from settlers and spoke of the need for "territorial compromise" over the West Bank and Gaza. For a time he hoped that King Hussein of Jordan could be Israel's Arab negotiating partner rather than Yasser Arafat. Peres met secretly with Hussein in London in 1987 and reached a framework agreement with him, but this was rejected by Israel's then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. Shortly afterward the First Intifada erupted, ending the plausibility of King Hussein as a potential Israeli partner in resolving the question of the West Bank. Subsequently, Peres gradually moved closer to support for talks with the PLO, although he avoided making an outright commitment to this policy until 1993, with the Oslo Accords. At the White House lawn signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, Peres nudged a reluctant Rabin to shake hands with Arafat -- an image that was flashed around the world. For two years, Peres worked furiously to keep the imperfect peace on track. Given the problem of settlements, it was, he said, an attempt “to turn an omelette back into eggs.” He negotiated directly with Arafat, turned the “Gaza and Jericho First” proposals agreed at the White House into reality, drafted the 1994 Paris Protocol of Israeli-Palestinian economic relations, promoted regional summits and in 1995 sealed Oslo II (an agreement to restore Palestinian rule to six major West Bank towns). Rabin, meanwhile, concentrated on Syrian talks via his military chief of staff, Ehud Barak. But Israeli fury at persistent terrorism prompted demonstrations against the Rabin-Peres administration. In 1995, Yigal Amir assassinated Rabin at a peace rally. Peres, Amir’s other intended target, was just feet away. He took over as prime minister on a wave of sympathy. With hindsight, Peres’ decision not to call immediate elections was undoubtedly an error. But, he achieved much in his six months in charge : he implemented Oslo II ahead of schedule, assuaged the religious right, bolstered the economy and co-operated with Arafat over the first-ever Palestinian elections. ~~~~~~ Support for Peres evaporated when a round of bomb attacks killed dozens in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and talks with Syria came to nothing. The conservative Likud party warned : “Peres will divide Jerusalem,” while Arab states feared that his dream of a borderless Middle East spelled Israeli economic colonialism by indirect means. Peres’s retaliatory invasion of Lebanon in April 1996 also failed when more than 100 refugees died in one Israeli bombing. For all Peres’ visions of a “new Middle East,” the electorate narrowly yet decisively favored Netanyahu in May 1996. After he lost, Peres devoted himself to the center for peace he had founded, with headquarters in Ajami, a largely Arab neighborhood of Jaffa. It is dedicated to dialogue, cultural, economic and youth initiatives, and healthcare assistance to Palestinians. In 1998 he wrote forewords to four books on the 50th anniversary of Israel’s independence. He also released For the Future of Israel, a series of philosophical conversations with the author Robert Littell. Where other Israeli politicians grudgingly accepted a Palestinian state as inevitable, only Peres argued in Le Monde that it was necessary for Israel’s future. When the new intifada broke out in 2000, polls backed Peres to restore the peace process. in the election, Peres emerged as foreign minister under Ariel Sharon in a Likud-Labor coalition government. This time Peres was the liberal brake to Sharon’s determinedly rightwing engine. Although many Israeli leftists felt outraged at his "betrayal," those who knew Peres realized that his personal friendship with Sharon counted for more than ideological agreement. Others felt that his overvaulting ambition had once again cost him his principles. Similar charges resurfaced in 2005, when he left Labor to co-found Kadima with Sharon, barely a month after losing the Labor leadership. Peres served as deputy premier after Kadima convincingly won elections in 2006. The following year, Peres left the Knesset to present himself for the presidency. As Israel’s ninth president, he helped restore his nation’s battered reputation. He became the first Israeli head of state to address a Moslem state legislature when he spoke to Turkey’s national assembly in November 2007. Turkey and Japan supported his “valley of peace initiative” for economic revival and joint industrial projects in the West Bank. In 2008 he launched the Israeli Presidential Conference, an annual brainstorming forum that attracted guests including George W Bush, Elie Wiesel, Robert De Niro, Rupert Murdoch and Bernard-Henri Lévy. In 2009, Peres served as the national host for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Israel. Most unusually for an Israeli president, Peres became his nation’s top diplomat. He asked Palestinians and Arab nations to join in “a great journey towards a world built on logic and intellect, not land." He negotiated directly with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, on behalf of a largely silent Netanyahu. He placated President Barack Obama when Israeli actions offended the Oval Office. And in 2013, he delivered a video interview beamed from Jerusalem to a security summit in Abu Dhabi for 29 foreign ministers of Arab and Moslem countries. But, Peres always created controversy. In his inaugural presidential speech, he bluntly stated that Israel had to “get rid of the territories." He said that he had changed his position, not his beliefs. ~~~~~~ Although many hailed Peres as a man of vision and peace, the Israeli right berated him for playing into the hands of the PLO. Many Likud supporters resented the way he pushed his peace agenda, especially since his stance seemed to contradict Netanyahu’s policies. For its part, the Israeli left accused Peres of acting as the 'cover' for a determined conservative Likud administration, especially in 2009 when he defended Israel’s continuing attack on Gaza and rejected the critical UN report into the Gaza war. Former liberal allies were confounded when, in May 2009, he proclaimed newly elected Likud prime minister Netanyahu a peace pioneer -- an opinion he reversed in 2015 when he blamed Netanyahu (re-elected that year) for talking peace but doing nothing to implement it. Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell wrote : “Over the years, Shimon Peres...destroyed everything of value [in Labor].” Other leftists blamed him for initiating with Oslo II the settlement bypass roads that seemed to make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. Peres repeatedly called Abbas a serious and true partner for peace, even admiring the courage, if not agreeing with the timing, of Abbas’s 2012 UN bid for Palestinian statehood. Yet many Palestinians blamed Peres for saddling them with inferior terms in the Paris economic deal of 1994, and Israeli critics charged him with abusing the non-political nature of the presidency. ~~~~~~ Dear readers, as late as November 2015, his health failing, Shimon Peres insisted that Israel faced “eternal war” if there was no Palestinian state. Peres was an intriguingly contradictory figure. Unlike holiness, he told David Frost, politics is built on compromise. Peres was not above taking bold decisions, as in supporting Ariel Sharon's military policy of operating the IDF to thwart suicide bombings. On the issue of the nuclear program of Iran and the supposed existential threat this poses for Israel, Peres stated, "I am not in favor of a military attack on Iran, but we must quickly and decisively establish a strong, aggressive coalition of nations that will impose painful economic sanctions on Iran," adding "Iran's efforts to achieve nuclear weapons should keep the entire world from sleeping soundly." In the same speech, Peres compared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his call to "wipe Israel off the map" to the genocidal threats to European Jewry made by Adolf Hitler in the years prior to the Holocaust. In an interview with Army Radio on 8 May 2006 he remarked that "the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map." That comment echoes the Peres who was Ariel Sharon's friend, military associate and political supporter. Both Peres and Sharon represented the Israeli generation that had to fight and scrap to cobble together an Israel in the first place. They were realists who did what had to be done, with whoever was willing to help them, to build a democracy safe for post-World War II Jews. They were tireless, dedicated visionaries driven by that one goal, a goal often belittled or refused by the larger world. But, they succeeded against all odds. And, if Peres, like Sharon, changed policies as their world morphed into a faceless, potentially nuclear, terrorist threat to Israel's very existence -- something David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, and even Menachem Begin never had to fully face -- their tactics adapted to meet the day's challenges to the survival of Israel. Today, the reality Israel faces is that the Palestinians and their terrorist leaders are there across the almost-seamless borders. Whether the Palestinians deserve a homeland is no longer the issue. Whether they have territorial rights or no territorial rights is no longer the issue. They are there. And Israel must find a way deal with them. If Sharon's "disengagement" policy of cutting the Palestinians loose to swim on their own with economic help from Israel did not work, if Peres' two-state solution did not work -- then Israel must find another way forward that does work. The world that Israel and its leaders now face is hostile to it for deep-seated cultural reasons that no rational human being can support. Peres and Sharon faced similar hostilities. So, to pick up the mantle of the Founders, to drive forward in a way that ensures Israel's future, those who would replace Sharon, the military genius, and Peres, the charismatic diplomat par excellence, must find both the courage and the underpinnings of reality that enlightened the Founders. Shimon Peres said it himself : "If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time." Cope. In the name of Israel. In the name of world peace. In the name of humanity. Millions of us stand firmly with Israel. The monumental error would be to let the heritage of Shimon Peres and the other Founders be wasted, fade and die. Rest in Peace, Shimon Peres.