Replies to post #196604 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

SPIEGEL Interview with Israeli President Shimon Peres

Released: December 10, 2012 | 04:44 PM

'We Have to Open Negotiations Right Away'


Photo Gallery: Hurdles to Peace in the Middle East
Photos .. http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/continued-strife-over-settlements-in-the-west-bank-fotostrecke-90774.html

AFP

The United Nations has recognized a Palestinian state and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to prefer confrontation over negotiation. But in an interview with SPIEGEL, Israeli President Shimon Peres says that there is no alternative to re-starting peace talks, adding that it is time to forget the past.

SPIEGEL: In a recent vote, the United Nations essentially recognized a state of Palestine by granting it "non-member observer status." Are you disappointed by that decision?

Peres: You can criticize the UN resolution, but it doesn't matter. I learned a long time ago that there is one thing in life you cannot change, and that is the past. What happened, happened.

SPIEGEL: Will the UN decision make peace negotiations with the Palestinians more difficult?

Peres: I don't know if more difficult, but more necessary. Now the major issue will be the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the two parties will try to hunt each other. Is that a prospect for the future? That's what we've done the whole time: They used to blame us, and we used to blame them. But we have to forget the past.

SPIEGEL: Yet when making claims to the Holy Land, both sides cite thousands of years of history.

Peres: We are not going to deal with Abraham, our father and brother. It's over.

SPIEGEL: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though, refers to that history on an almost daily basis.

Peres: History is necessary to justify the present. But to go back 2,000 years? My God, leave it to the historians. What happened 2,000 years ago is not being repeated today. My proposal is: Draw a line and say there is a forgiveness of the past; we are not going to sue each other. It's a waste of time. We have to open negotiations without prior conditions right away. And right away means after parliamentary elections on January 22.

SPIEGEL: Germany abstained in the recent UN vote on Palestinian status. One element contributing to Berlin's position was Chancellor Angela Merkel's frustration that Netanyahu has yet to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians. Can you understand her position?

Peres: I would have liked Germany to vote differently. But so what? When I look deeper and ask myself what I prefer, a German Europe or a Germany that is European, I prefer a European Germany. And this decision is part of Germany being European.

SPIEGEL: Last Thursday, high-level meetings between Israeli and German cabinet members were held in Berlin. Before arriving, Prime Minister Netanyahu complained about Germany's UN vote. What do you think about the state of German-Israeli relations?

Peres: I think the relationship is fair, and I think that the attitude of Chancellor Merkel is remarkable. She has her positions, and her thinking is constant. I respect her very much. Germany's ties to Israel are deep, not opportunistic. It happens from time to time that we have a disagreement. Even the blue skies of the Mediterranean have clouds sometimes. But the sky is blue.

SPIEGEL: Germany wasn't alone. With the exception of the Czech Republic, every EU country either voted in favor of the Palestinians or abstained. Is Israel becoming increasingly isolated?

Peres: They didn't vote for us because of the lack of negotiations. As soon as we start negotiations, they will support us.

SPIEGEL: But what if there aren't any negotiations?

Peres: No negotiations is not a possibility. We have to negotiate. Basically, we already have a foundation for an agreement: two states and the settlement blocks. There will be three blocks, and we shall give to the Palestinians an equal piece of land. The settlements take up maybe 2 to 6 percent of the West Bank. It's not unsolvable.

SPIEGEL: If the solution is really so simple, why wasn't peace achieved many years ago?

Peres: The real problem is how to start negotiations. You cannot begin the negotiations with the end. So we have to define how to start. And I think we have to start the following way: To say what happened until now will stop and there will be a forgiveness of the past. We have to start without prior conditions.

SPIEGEL: You had a series of secret meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas more than a year ago. The two of you had gotten close to reaching an agreement on how to restart negotiations. But at that point, Netanyahu asked you to break off contact.

Peres: Look, that's the past again. But Netanyahu agreed to a two-state solution.

SPIEGEL: On paper, perhaps. But nothing has happened. And in all likelihood, the next government will be even less willing to negotiate.

Peres: The future government will have to make a strategic decision. And Israel doesn't have a better choice than the two-state solution.

SPIEGEL: Is that just your opinion? Or does Prime Minister Netanyahu share it as well? His actions would seem to indicate that he doesn't.

Peres: These four years will not be repeated.

SPIEGEL: What makes you so sure?

Peres: My experience. That's the difference between young and old. I am old. I can tell you, reality affects leaders more than any leader affects reality. I am sure Netanhayu doesn't want a bi-national state. A bi-national state would not have peace -- because of the tension, the differences and the smallness of the land.

SPIEGEL: But it seems more like Netanyahu wants to preserve the status quo.

Peres: At the moment, yes, maybe. But there will be another moment.

SPIEGEL: How have you retained your optimism over all these years of strife?

Peres: I remember the early days. I came to a country that had nothing, a small piece of land with a swamp in the north and a desert in the south. We didn't have water. We had two lakes -- one dead, the other dying -- and one river, the Jordan, which has more fame than water. In 1948, we were a small group of 650,000 people surrounded by tremendous hostility, outgunned, outnumbered, without natural resources. We had a war before we had a state. We had an army before we had a government. We didn't have a chance -- and yet, look what happened.

SPIEGEL: That was 1948. But if you compare the current situation to the hopeful times of August 1993, when the Oslo peace accords were signed, you have to admit that things have gotten much worse.

Peres: Some critics also said that we would never make peace with any Arab country. We made peace with Egypt; we made peace with Jordan. We started to make peace with the Palestinians. And, as a matter of fact, there is a Palestinian Authority, and there is sort of a relationship.

SPIEGEL: What are the chances that you will live to see successful negotiations concluded between the Israelis and Palestinians?

Peres: One-hundred percent. It may take a little bit more time than I wish. We have to be patient, we have to be constant and we shouldn't listen to pessimists. They make as many mistakes as the optimists.

SPIEGEL: One could also see your constant optimism as nothing more than a fig leaf for a government that lacks sufficient will to compromise.

Peres: Such accusations are nonsense. In my long political career, I have participated in doing unbelievable things for this country. What I did are real things -- not fig leaves, but figs, the fruits.

SPIEGEL: Some see Netanyahu's current term as prime minister as four lost years in terms of reform and important changes. During his term, the climate has also become more hostile toward African immigrants and Israeli Arabs.

Peres: I'm not so sure that everything is so bleak. Look at relations with Arabs in Israel itself: It looks like an impossible relationship. But if you look a bit closer, there are islands of peace between us. For instance, take health care. There is not a single hospital in Israel that doesn't have Arab nurses, doctors, patients and Jewish doctors, nurses and patients working together without problems. It's complete peace in the hospitals.

SPIEGEL: Many in Israel view the Arab Spring as an "Arab winter." Do you share that view?

Peres: I see it as a "world spring" rather than an Arab spring. The climate of change is global, not national. And you can't come to a world spring dressed for winter.

SPIEGEL: To what extent have the revolutions in the Arab world influenced what happens in Israel?

Peres: Not everything that happens in the Middle East is connected to Israel. The bloodshed in Syria is not connected to Israel. Egypt has nothing to do with Israel. And the same goes for Tunisia and Yemen. There are some fanatics who try to introduce the conflict between us and the Palestinians as an excuse for their extremism, but they are a minority. So I think we have to disconnect ourselves from this transitional period in the Middle East.

SPIEGEL: You have spoken about a "new Middle East" for decades. Is the Middle East that is currently taking shape like the one you have envisioned?

Peres: There is not yet a new Middle East. There is a divorce from the old Middle East, but not yet a new Middle East. We're in a period of transition. But they are building governments; the process has started. The young generation has already achieved something. First of all, they got rid of their dictators. They pushed their countries to elections. They didn't know how to win elections, but they did introduce elections.

SPIEGEL: Four months ago, shortly before you celebrated your 89th birthday, you publicly warned Israelis against making a unilateral strike on Iran. What worried you so much that you chose to speak out?

Peres: The problem of Iran is a global problem. Israel doesn't have to monopolize it.

SPIEGEL: Does that mean you don't trust your country's current leaders to make the right decision?

Peres: I respect leaders, but I respect realities as well. And I prefer to go with a coalition led by the United States. President Barack Obama, in my judgment, is a serious and constant leader. He is against Iranians having a bomb because it's a danger to the world.

SPIEGEL: You recently complained about losing sleep because you're so worried. Should we be worried, too?

Peres: Sure, I am worried … and therefore I expressed my views. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin told me he can't stand a nuclear bomb in the hands of the Iranians. So why do it alone? I don't understand that.

SPIEGEL: Your positions on this and many other issues are contrary to those held by the current government and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Why aren't you more openly critical?

Peres: I prefer to express what I am for, and not what I am against.

SPIEGEL: Many Israelis were expecting to see you run as the head of the opposition in the upcoming elections. Why did you ultimately choose not to run?

Peres: I was elected for seven years as president. I want to fulfill what I took upon myself. I don't lack opportunities. I don't feel that I am idle. I think that I have to tell the story of my country and where we are heading.

SPIEGEL: Did you ever even consider running?

Peres: I feel that I can influence just as much with goodwill as with administrative power. I think I have, in a way, an educational responsibility to tell young people where we are heading. I hope I'm not exaggerating, but I hope that people are listening to me very carefully.

SPIEGEL: President Peres, we thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Hans Hoyng and Juliane von Mittelstaedt

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-israeli-president-shimon-peres-on-peace-a-871911.html

Your NYT is a GEM; rain in a drought which parts of Australia had more of today .. fooking gerate! ..
great to see, 89 years young Shimon Peres, so universally settled in this instant of time ..
definitely a must/SHOULD read for all .. no way to pick out any one pearl so .. this is important ..

Referring to the continuing tension between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama, Peres said: “I cannot tell you what Bibi’s considerations are on the subject of Iran. I am not his spokesman and also not [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak’s. That’s not my job. I am not looking for confrontations with them. I do think that I can explain the American pattern. America knows how to throw a punch when it has to, in order to keep the world balanced. But the punches follow a set procedure. They don’t begin by shooting. They try all the other means first — economic sanctions, political pressure, negotiations, everything possible.

“But in the end,” he added, “if none of this works, then President Obama will use military power against Iran. I am sure of it.”

I was surprised by Peres’s stridency. He had long been perceived as a moderating force on Netanyahu, a mediator between the prime minister and the international community that was losing patience with him. A month earlier, Obama awarded Peres the Presidential Medal of Freedom — America’s highest civilian honor. But the ceremony served only to deepen the rift between Peres and Netanyahu, and three weeks later, as reports became more frequent that Netanyahu was planning to send bombers to Iran, Peres took advantage of his 89th-birthday celebrations to speak out publicly against an attack. The prime minister’s office responded with ferocity, proclaiming, “Peres has forgotten what the president’s job is,” and recalling that in 1981, Peres opposed Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s decision to bomb Iraq’s nuclear reactor, an act that many Israelis consider a great achievement.

Considered "a great achievement", yet where are we now? .. how many more enemies?
.. that just to make the point .. for sure, Shimon Peres .. it doesn't matter NOW .. AGREE!

Spring Flowers: Music by Donna Germano

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5NDb5-SzUY

[StephanieVanbryce]

Hard Choices

Shimon Peres on the New Middle East

June 21, 2012

Many people say I was wrong when I talked about the new Middle East and the need for more ties with our Arab neighbors. I’m not wrong. It’s just taking more time than I thought. I wish we could shorten the time in moving from one world to another.

The present Arab uprising didn’t stem from Israel. The old guard is trying to keep down the young chickens. The old guard is better organized. They may win elections, but unless they have a solution to poverty, to corruption, to oppression, they will not last. I am with the young people.

Right now it’s a transitional period that’s full of suffering and blood. Israel has to be very careful not to appear to intervene in the changes which are so painful. I admire the people in Syria who are going against open fire to demonstrate. Clearly, there’s no future for a dictator. New technologies open people’s eyes.

You know who is against democracy in the Middle East? The husbands. They got used to their way of life. Now, the traditional way of life must change. Everybody must change. If you don’t give equal rights to women, you can’t progress. This region can’t remain separate in a world that became global. It will happen. I’m optimistic about our future. I’m optimistic about America’s future. The United States is the only power in history that became great by giving and not by taking. I think the crisis was when the United States had more money than ideas. Money doesn’t produce money. Ideas produce money.

I didn’t plan to be a politician. The founder of our country, David Ben-Gurion, called me from the kibbutz to serve in the underground. We were short of manpower, short of arms. I was 24 years old. I was supposed to serve my country for one or two years. I am 89 years old this year, and I keep going.

People waste too much time thinking about what to be. The problem in life is not what to be, but what to do. What choice do we have but to work for peace? Peace with Palestine is something most Israelis would like, but they find hard to support. They’re worried that we’re going to become too soft and submit to too much pressure. My answer is that we have to take a risk. There are two things in life you cannot achieve unless you close your eyes a little bit. That is love and peace. — As told to Diane Brady

VIDEO: Shimon Peres on His Political Career with Charlie Rose [ http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-03-05/charlie-rose-shimon-peres-on-his-political-career ]


http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-21/shimon-peres-on-the-new-middle-east

[fuagf]

Shimon Peres of Israel Dies at 93; Built Up Defense and Sought Peace

"Shimon Peres on Obama, Iran and the Path to Peace "

.. sad news ..

By MARILYN BERGERSEPT. 27, 2016

VIDEO - Obituaries By THE NEW YORK TIMES 4:57

Shimon Peres: 1923-2016

A look at the life and career of Mr. Peres, a former Israeli prime minister and president, featuring commentary from Clyde Haberman, a former Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. By THE NEW YORK TIMES on Publish Date September 28, 2016. Photo by Todd Heisler/The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »
http://www.nytimes.com/video/obituaries/100000004675688/shimon-peres-1923-2016.html?action=click&contentCollection=world&module=lede®ion=caption&pgtype=article

Shimon Peres, one of the last surviving pillars of Israel’s founding generation, who did more than anyone to build up his country’s formidable military might, then worked as hard to establish a lasting peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors, died on Wednesday in a Tel Aviv area hospital. He was 93.

His death was announced by his son Nehemya Peres, who is known as Chemi, and his personal physician and son-in-law Dr. Rafi Walden, outside the Sheba Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized for the last two weeks.

Mr. Peres died just over two weeks after suffering a stroke. Doctors kept him largely unconscious and on a breathing tube since then in hopes that it would give his brain a chance to heal. But he deteriorated as the nation he once led watched his last battle play out publicly and leaders from around the world sent wishes for his recovery.

As prime minister (twice); as minister of defense, foreign affairs, finance and transportation; and, until 2014, as president, Mr. Peres never left the public stage during Israel’s seven decades.

He led the creation of Israel’s defense industry, negotiated key arms deals with France and Germany and was the prime mover behind the development of Israel’s nuclear weapons. But he was consistent in his search for an accommodation with the Arab world, a search that in recent years left him orphaned as Israeli society lost interest, especially after the upheavals of the 2011 Arab Spring led to tumult on its borders.

Chosen by Parliament .. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/world/middleeast/13cnd-israel.html .. in 2007 to serve a seven-year term as president, Mr. Peres had complicated relations with the hawkish government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, elected in 2009. While largely a ceremonial post, the presidency afforded Mr. Peres a perch with access and public attention, and he tried to exert his influence.

For someone who was dogged for decades by a reputation for vanity and back-room dealing, Mr. Peres ended his years in public office as a remarkably beloved figure, promoting the country’s high-tech prowess and cultural reach, a founding pioneer who set an example for forward thinking.

Never at a loss for a bon mot in his Polish-accented Hebrew, English and French, Mr. Peres said of his transformation: “For 60 years, I was the most controversial figure in the country, and suddenly I’m the most popular man in the land. Truth be told, I don’t know when I was happier, then or now.”


Slide Show|12 Photos The Life of Shimon Peres
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2014/06/28/world/middleeast/the-life-of-shimon-peres.html

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Historic Handshake

In his efforts to help Israel find acceptance in a hostile region, Mr. Peres’s biggest breakthrough came in 1993 when he worked out a plan with the Palestine Liberation Organization for self-government in Gaza and in part of the West Bank, both of which were occupied by Israel.

After months of secret negotiation with representatives of the P.L.O., conducted with the help of Norwegian diplomats and intellectuals, Mr. Peres persuaded his old political rival Yitzhak Rabin, then the prime minister, to accept the plan, which became known as the Oslo Accords.

Mr. Peres, who was serving as foreign minister, signed the accords on Sept. 13, 1993 .. http://tinyurl.com/zpk24lh , in a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House as Mr. Rabin and their old enemy Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the P.L.O., looked on and, with some prodding by President Bill Clinton, shook hands.

It was a gesture both unprecedented and historic. Up to that time, Israel had refused to negotiate directly with the P.L.O. Mr. Peres broke the taboo, and the impasse.

“What we are doing today is more than signing an agreement; it is a revolution,” he said at the ceremony. “Yesterday a dream, today a commitment.”

“We are sincere,” he pledged to the Palestinians. “We mean business. We do not seek to shape your lives or determine your destiny. Let all of us turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels.”

--
Multimedia Feature
Shimon Peres’s Reflections on War, Peace and Life

The former prime minister and president of Israel was a fountain of seemingly effortless bons mots and poetic musings.
OPEN Multimedia Feature
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/28/world/middleeast/shimon-peres-quotes.html
--

Later that day, in a television interview, Mr. Peres pronounced himself 100 percent sure that peace had arrived. With the changes in the world — the end of the Cold War; the collapse of the Soviet Union and, with it, its military, financial and diplomatic support of the P.L.O.; and the drying up of funds from Arab countries angered over Arafat’s support of Iraq in the recent Persian Gulf war — the time had come for the Palestinians, too, to seek peace.

“If you have children,” he said, “you cannot feed them forever with flags for breakfast and cartridges for lunch. You need something more substantial. Unless you educate your children and spend less money on conflicts, unless you develop your science, technology and industry, you don’t have a future.”

Mr. Peres, Mr. Rabin and Arafat were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

But the era of good feelings did not last. Barely a year later, Mr. Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish gunman upset by the accords, elevating Mr. Peres to the post of prime minister. A series of Palestinian suicide bombings undercut Mr. Peres’s authority, and he lost a narrow election to Mr. Netanyahu in 1996.

Conflict between Israel and the Palestinians accelerated in 2000 after a visit by the opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the sacred plaza in Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The next day, the Israeli police fired on stone-throwing protesters, inaugurating a new round of violence that became known as the second intifada.

It did not end until Arafat died in 2004 .. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/11/world/middleeast/yasir-arafat-father-and-leader-of-palestinian-nationalism.html , bringing new leadership to the Palestinians and a new effort at coexistence led by Mr. Sharon, a former hawk who was elected prime minister and withdrew Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza and small parts of the West Bank.

Mr. Peres had tried before to get a peace settlement, in 1987, at that time between Israel and Jordan. He was foreign minister in a coalition government with Yitzhak Shamir when he proposed an international peace conference on the Middle East. But Mr. Shamir and his Likud faction scuttled the plan.

Mr. Peres had sought to settle the future of the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel had occupied since the Arab-Israeli War in 1967. As a first step, he proposed that Jordan and Israel could either divide the land or share the government but that Israel should not control the area forever.


Mr. Peres, left, with Yitzhak Shamir in 1988 in Jerusalem. Credit Anat Givon/Associated Press

A Coalition, and Calm

Mr. Peres became prime minister at the head of an unusual coalition of Israel’s two major political parties, his own Labor Party, and the Likud, the party led by Yitzhak Shamir, who served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister. In accordance with the coalition agreement, the two men exchanged posts after 25 months.

Mr. Peres brought a period of tranquillity to the social environment, which had been frayed by animosities between European and Middle Eastern Jews and between religious Jews and secular Jews.

He presided over the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon after an invasion that had generated unprecedented controversy, and he became the first Israeli prime minister to take the difficult steps required to deal with the nation’s fundamental economic problems and ruinous inflation.

During his time in office, Israel airlifted some 7,000 Ethiopian Jews who had trekked to refugee camps in Sudan to escape famine, anti-Semitism, forced conscription of boys and other threats that made their lives in Ethiopia precarious. Mr. Peres called the clandestine rescue operation a “daring and wonderful” act of “self-redemption.”


During Mr. Peres’s time in office, Israel airlifted some 7,000 Jews from Ethiopia in what he called a
“daring and wonderful” act of “self-redemption.” Sven Nackstrand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Taking over what was expected to be a government of national impasse, Mr. Peres left office with an image as a dignified, self-confident statesman.

But while he was prime minister, severe strains developed in relations between the United States and Israel growing out of a major spy scandal involving an American, Jonathan Jay Pollard, and the disclosure in 1986 of Iranian arms deals.

A man of medium height and slender, athletic build — his dark hair turned gray and then white in his later years — Mr. Peres always exuded vitality, despite a schedule that kept him going 18 hours a day. When, on his 88th birthday, he was offered a traditional Jewish greeting, “May you live till 120,” he retorted without missing a beat, “Don’t be stingy.”

Mr. Peres was married to the former Sonya Gelman, who shunned the spotlight to the point of refusing to move into the president’s house when he took his last public post. She died in January 2011. They had three children: a daughter, Zvia, and two sons, Jonathan and Nehemya. They and Mr. Peres’s eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren survive him.

Mr. Peres was an effective speaker, comfortable in front of large audiences as well as the television camera. He cultivated party members — remembering their names and attending their weddings and bar mitzvahs — and nurtured his relationship with the intelligentsia.

He also wrote poetry and was given to quoting the ancient Greeks and Flaubert and Churchill. He published a dozen books, including “The New Middle East,” in 1993, and “Battling for Peace,” a memoir, in 1995. His last book was an affectionate political biography of his mentor, the country’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.


A picture of David Ben-Gurion was on the wall of Mr. Peres’s office in Tel Aviv. He became
known as one of “Ben-Gurion’s boys.” Credit Associated Press

A Journey From Poland

He was born Shimon Persky on Aug. 16, 1923, in the small village of Vishniewa, Poland, to a merchant family. His parents, Yitzhak and Sara Persky, took him to Palestine when he was 11, where he studied in Tel Aviv and then entered an agricultural school.

In 1941, he helped found Kibbutz Alumot in the eastern Lower Galilee, where he worked as a herdsman and was elected kibbutz secretary. He soon became active in the Mapai, which was to become Israel’s Labor Party, and, at 18, was appointed the coordinator of the youth movement of the Histadrut, the General Labor Federation.

He rose rapidly, getting experience in the intricacies of Israeli political life. In 1944, Ben-Gurion, then the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, sent Mr. Peres with a small reconnaissance group to Eilat on the Red Sea to survey the Sinai Desert and make maps that became important strategic assets during the 1948 war of independence.

It was on that mission that a friend sighted a nest of eagles, “peres” in Hebrew. “Persky,” he said, “why don’t you change your family name to Peres?” He accepted the suggestion, though, in fact, the bird they saw was more a vulture than an eagle.

When Israel became independent in 1948, Mr. Peres was named head of the naval service. Within two years, he was sent to the United States to lead a defense supply mission in New York. He was 27 and spoke no English, but within three months, after rounds of intensive private lessons, he was fluent. He took courses at the New School for Social Research and New York University, and later at the Harvard School of Public Administration.

In 1951, Ben-Gurion, then prime minister and minister of defense, appointed Mr. Peres director general of the Defense Ministry, where he used his Harvard training to reorganize the department. Mr. Peres became known as one of “Ben-Gurion’s boys” — protégés of the “Old Man” — a group that included Teddy Kollek and Moshe Dayan.

Those years may have been the genesis of a lifelong rivalry with Mr. Rabin, who at the time was chief of the operations branch, the second-highest position in the Israeli Army, and who complained of what he called Mr. Peres’s excessive authority.

At the Defense Ministry, Mr. Peres was in charge of a substantial portion of the nation’s total budget, and he played a central role in developing the young nation’s industry, particularly in aeronautics and electronics.

He stressed domestic weapons production, but when Egypt received advanced military equipment from the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, Mr. Peres began to cast about for new sources of supply. He finally turned to France.

His timing was excellent. The French believed the Algerian revolutionaries fighting for independence were fueled by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and saw Israel as a source of intelligence about Egypt. Mr. Peres negotiated a $1 billion arms deal and acquired a reputation as a canny bargainer.

The arms negotiations formed a basis for the Franco-Israeli alliance that led to Israel’s lightning capture of Sinai during the Arab-Israeli War in 1967. Zeev Schiff, for many years the military editor of the newspaper Haaretz, said, “There is no doubt that Peres was one of the brains behind Suez.”

Ben-Gurion felt that a pre-emptive war was bad for Israel in terms of public opinion and was reluctant until the last. Mr. Peres saw it as an opportunity to get a better position among the superpowers, a special relationship through a “joint venture of going to war together.”

Out of that joint venture came French help in building a nuclear reactor in Dimona, which provided Israel with the ability to build nuclear weapons.

“I reached the stage in France where I was trusted by everybody, and really the sky was the limit,” Mr. Peres said many years later.


In 2012, President Obama presented Mr. Peres with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, one
of many international distinctions that Mr. Peres received. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

Power Struggles

In 1957, Mr. Peres was awarded the French Legion of Honor, one of many international distinctions. In 2012, President Obama presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The American honor partly reflected Israel’s shift in alliance to the United States from Europe in previous decades. While under Ben-Gurion, and his successor, Levi Eshkol, Mr. Peres negotiated with the West German defense minister, Franz Josef Strauss, to get arms and continued to get weapons from France, as well. But he came to rely increasingly on the United States. He visited Washington frequently and met with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Mr. Peres ran for the country’s Parliament, the Knesset, in 1959, in his first bid for national elective office. With the support of Ben-Gurion, he was given a position high enough on his party’s electoral list to be assured of victory.

In the political turmoil that preceded the 1967 Middle East War, Mr. Peres tried to negotiate a return to power for Ben-Gurion, who had retired. In the course of his negotiations, he proposed a coalition to Menachem Begin, the head of the right-wing Herut Party, despite Ben-Gurion’s belief that if Mr. Begin ever came to power, he would bring Israel to the “precipice of destruction.”

Shabtai Teveth, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and the biographer of Ben-Gurion, said in an interview, “I believe Peres will go down in Zionist and Israeli history as the man who legitimized Begin and the Herut.”

Ten years later, in 1977, when Mr. Peres challenged Mr. Rabin, the split in the Labor Party opened the way for the election of Mr. Begin as prime minister.

When Israel’s top leaders were discredited because of the country’s lack of preparedness for the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Mr. Peres made a bid for power. To block him, Finance Minister Pinchas Sapir recruited Mr. Rabin, who had been ambassador to the United States and bore no responsibility for the wartime failures. Mr. Rabin named Mr. Peres defense minister, a decision he later came to regret. In his memoirs, Mr. Rabin called him unscrupulous and untrustworthy. He wrote that he could not believe a word Mr. Peres said.


Mr. Peres, in 1976, then defense minister, spoke with Israeli paratroopers after the completion of Operation Entebbe. The raid rescued 91 passengers and 12 crew members who had been hijacked on a flight to Paris from Tel Aviv. Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Their decades-old feud flared again in 1976 when an Air France plane that left Tel Aviv for Paris was hijacked in Athens and taken to Entebbe, Uganda. The hijackers held about 100 Israeli passengers hostage. Mr. Peres accused Prime Minister Rabin of weakness for resisting a military solution. A raid by Israeli commandos on July 3, 1976, rescued 91 passengers and 12 crew members.

The next year, Mr. Peres again sought nomination as his party’s candidate for prime minister, but he again lost out to Mr. Rabin. When Mr. Rabin was forced to drop out after disclosures that he and his wife had violated Israeli law by maintaining a bank account in Washington, Mr. Peres led the party, but he lost in the general election to Mr. Begin.

Mr. Peres finally became prime minister in 1984 when he led his Labor Party into the coalition with Likud.

He returned to office as foreign minister in July 1992 in the government of Mr. Rabin and was soon working toward the accord signed a year later. In 1996, Mr. Peres, who had taken over as prime minister after Mr. Rabin’s assassination, called an early election, certain of victory.

But a series of terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and Mr. Peres’s decision to mount an offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon — during which scores of Lebanese refugees sheltering at a United Nations base in Qana died in an Israeli artillery barrage — led to ill feelings in Israel and the surprise victory by Mr. Netanyahu of Likud.

Ehud Barak then replaced Mr. Peres as head of Labor and kept him in a minor role in his government, which was elected in 1999.

Mr. Peres spent that period partly building up his Peres Center for Peace .. http://www.peres-center.org/ .. but made another political comeback when Mr. Sharon was elected prime minister in 2001 over Mr. Barak.

Mr. Peres took Labor into the Sharon-led government in a bid for national unity. Later, in 2005, he left Labor and joined the new centrist party, Kadima, formed by Mr. Sharon.

Mr. Peres, who frequently drew on historical allusions, thought of himself as philosopher more than a politician. When asked about the 1993 Oslo Accords, he said: “There was no alternative. We had to do it.” He added, “An ancient Greek philosopher was asked what is the difference between war and peace. ‘In war,’ he replied, ‘the old bury the young. In peace, the young bury the old.’ I felt that if I could make the world better for the young, that would be the greatest thing we can do.”

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Isabel Kershner, Peter Baker and Ethan Bronner contributed reporting.

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