Long-time leader of Israel's Labor Party.
By Ami Isseroff
This Peres biography
is copyrighted by and reprinted with the permission of the Zionism
and Israel Information Center.
Shimon Peres was born August 21, 1923 in Vishneva, White
Russia (then Poland) near Volozhin, to Yitzhak and Sara Persky. In 1931, his
father, emigrated to Palestine. His family followed two years later. Peres was
initially enrolled in the Balfour High School, followed by the Geula High
School ("Gymnasium") where he became a member of the Hanoar Haoved
youth movement. At the end of ninth grade he quit school and moved to the
Ben-Shemen agricultural school and youth village. Peres joined the Haganah
underground in 1941. He trained at Kibbutz Geva and was then sent to join
Kibbutz Alumot in the lower Galilee. He married Sonya Gelman in 1945 and they
had two daughters and a son.
Early Political Career
At Alumoth, Peres was recruited by Levi Eshkol to work as an
organizer for the Hanoar Haoved youth movement in Tel-Aviv. He was subsequently
elected Secretary General of Hanoar Haoved, the Histradrut labor federation's
youth movement, and was a delegate in 1946 to the 22nd World Zionist Congress.
At the congress he met David Ben-Gurion and backed his program, which favored
forming a Jewish state. In 1947, Ben-Gurion selected Peres and several others
to search for officer talent for the Haganah [the precursor to the Israeli
Defense Forces]. In May 1947, Ben-Gurion drafted Peres into the Haganah high
command, where he was initially in charge of manpower and later became involved
in arms procurement and production.
Peres served as chief of the naval department in 1948, was sent to the United
States in 1950 on an arms-procurement mission (as well as to complete his
education), and was Director General of the Defense Ministry from 1953-1959.
Peres was instrumental in establishing the indigenous Israeli defense
industries, including and especially the Avionics industries, and he is also known
as the father of the Israeli hi-tech industry. In his tenure at the Ministry of
Defense he built an alliance with France that secured a source of arms, and
helped to enlist Britain and France in the Suez campaign of 1956. He also
embarked on a program to develop nuclear power and nuclear weapons for Israel,
convincing the French to help Israel build a secret nuclear reactor beginning in
about 1957.
Climbing the Ranks
Peres was a close associate of Ben-Gurion and rose in the Mapai
Party "young guard." He was first elected to the Knesset (parliament)
in 1959. He then served as Deputy Defense Minister. Leaving Mapai with
Ben-Gurion in 1965 over the Lavon affair [a failed espionage and terrorism plot
in Egypt], he helped form the breakaway Rafi Party and returned to the Knesset
in 1965. Three years later he returned to Mapai, forming the new
"Alignment" party. From 1969, Peres served as Minister of Immigrant Absorption
and minister without portfolio until August 1970, when he became Minister of Transport
and Communication. In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War (1973) Peres briefly
served as Minister of Information as part of a cabinet reshuffle. During this
period, Peres was part of the right-wing of the Labor or Alignment party as it
was variously known, and actively encouraged settlement of the occupied West
Bank.
In 1974, Peres lost a contest for party leadership to Yitzhak Rabin by 298
votes to 254. The Knesset endorsed the Rabin government in June, with Peres as
Minister of Defense. However, relations between Rabin and Peres remained
strained for many years. In his memoirs, Rabin famously called Peres an
"incorrigible subversive." Peres was actively involved in the
separation of forces agreements with Syria and Egypt following the Yom Kippur
War. He also administered the occupied West Bank.
Peres replaced Rabin as Israel Labor Party head after it was
revealed that Rabin's wife had $3,000 in an illegal bank account in the United
States. Peres was unable to lead the Labor party to victory however, and in
1977 the party lost power for the first time since the State of Israel was
founded in 1948.
Beginning in 1981, Israel suffered a period of uncontrolled
and disastrous inflation as well as the war in Lebanon initiated by Ariel
Sharon. Following the 1984 elections, a unity government was formed, with Peres
and Yitzhak Shamir serving alternately as Prime Ministers. Peres was in large
part responsible for an economic plan which brought inflation down from over
700% annually to about 15% in a very brief time. Peres was also involved in the
"Irangate" affair, in which Israel cooperated with Oliver North and
others to exchange US hostages held by Iranian-backed Lebanese terror groups in
return for US military equipment that would be sold through Israel.
Peres tried to bring down the Shamir government in a
parliamentary coup, but failed. Elections in 1988 led to a second unity
government, where Peres served as Finance Minister.
The Oslo Years
In 1992, Peres lost party leadership to Yitzhak Rabin, who
led the Labor party to victory in that year's elections. Peres was appointed
Foreign Minister in the new Labor cabinet. Together with his assistant, Yossi
Beilin, Peres was responsible for the negotiations that brought about the Oslo
Accords. In 1994, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak
Rabin, and Yasser Arafat in recognition of their role in the Oslo peace process.
On November 4, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by
Yigal Amir, minutes after he and Peres had stood side by side on a podium at a
giant peace rally in the main square of Tel Aviv, now called Rabin square.
Peres became Prime Minister, vowing to continue the peace negotiations and
overseeing the Oslo Interim Agreement (Oslo II). In February 1996, Peres called
for new elections, hoping that they would renew his mandate for peace. Polls
showed an overwhelming majority for the Labor party in the wake of the
assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. However, several bus bombings, and a suicide
bombing in Dizengoff square in Tel Aviv helped quench the enthusiasm for peace
and drove Jewish voters to the opposition Likud party.
After Rabin
Peres refused to campaign actively and left administration
of the campaign to Haim Ramon, who relied on the polls and did little, instead
of pursuing an aggressive campaign stressing the heritage of Rabin. In a debate
with challenger Benjamin Netanyahu, Peres gave a lackluster performance. Peres
lost the elections by a narrow margin. He subsequently founded the Peres Peace
Foundation to further joint economic ventures that would foster peace.
In May 1997, Peres retired from his position as party head. Party leadership
was taken over by Ehud Barak, who became Prime Minister in the elections of May
1999. Peres was proposed for the post of President of Israel, but lost the
election in the Israeli Knesset to Moshe Katsav. However, after Barak lost the
elections in 2000 to Ariel Sharon, he retired from politics, and Peres again
became head of the Israel Labor Party. He served as Foreign Minister in the
unity government of Ariel Sharon until Labor left the government prior to the
elections of 2003, and again was Deputy Prime Minister in the unity government
of Ariel Sharon in 2005. In November of 2005, Peres was defeated in an election
for Labor Party Secretary by Amir Peretz.
Subsequently Peres transferred his allegiance to Ariel
Sharon and the Kadima Party.
Ami Isseroff is a Web
journalist and director of MidEastWeb
for Coexistence. He lives in Rehovot, Israel.
