Shimon peres biography pdf

Israeli prime minister (1923–2016)

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Shimon Peres (shee-MOHNPERR-ess, -⁠ez;^[1][2][3]Hebrew: שמעון פרס[ʃiˌmonˈpeʁes]^ⓘ; born Szymon Perski, Polish:[ˈʂɨmɔnˈpɛrskʲi]; 2 August 1923 – 28 September 2016) was an Israeli politician and statesman who served as the eighth prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the ninthpresident of Israel from 2007 to 2014. He was a member of twelve cabinets and represented five political parties in a political career spanning 70 years.^[4] Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and except for three months out of office in early 2006, served as a member of the Knesset continuously until he was elected president in 2007. Serving in the Knesset for 48 years (with the first uninterrupted stretch lasting more than 46 years), Peres is the longest serving member in the Knesset's history. At the time of his retirement from politics in 2014, he was the world's oldest head of state and was considered the last link to Israel's founding generation.^[5]

From a young age, he was renowned for his oratorical brilliance, and was chosen as a protégé by David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father.^[6] He began his political career in the late 1940s, holding several diplomatic and military positions during and directly after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. His first high-level government position was as deputy director general of defense in 1952 which he attained at the age of 28, and director general from 1953 until 1959.^[7] In 1956, he took part in the historic negotiations on the Protocol of Sèvres,^[8] which was described by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden as the "highest form of statesmanship".^[9] In 1963, he held negotiations with U.S. President John F. Kennedy, which resulted in the sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, the first sale of U.S. military equipment to Israel.^[10] Peres represented Mapai, Rafi, the Alignment, Labor and Kadima in the Knesset, and led Alignment and Labor.^[11]

Peres first succeeded Yitzhak Rabin as acting prime minister briefly during 1977, before becoming prime minister from 1984 to 1986. As foreign minister under Prime Minister Rabin, Peres engineered the 1994 Israel–Jordan peace treaty,^[12] and won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize together with Rabin and Yasser Arafat for the Oslo Accords peace talks with the Palestinian leadership.^[7] In 1996, he founded the Peres Center for Peace, which has the aim of "promot[ing] lasting peace and advancement in the Middle East by fostering tolerance, economic and technological development, cooperation and well-being."^[13] After suffering a stroke, Peres died in 2016 near Tel Aviv.^[14][15]

Early life

Shimon Peres was born Szymon Perski, on 2 August 1923,^[16] in Wiszniew, Poland (now Vishnyeva, Belarus), to Yitzhak (1896–1962) and Sara (1905–1969, née Meltzer) Perski.^[7][17] The family spoke Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian at home, and Peres learned Polish at school. He then learned to speak English and French.^[18] His father was a wealthy timber merchant, later branching out into other commodities; his mother was a librarian. Peres had a younger brother, Gershon.^[19] He was related to the American film star Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske), and they were described as first cousins,^[20] but Peres said, "In 1952 or 1953, I came to New York... Lauren Bacall called me, said that she wanted to meet, and we did. We sat and talked about where our families came from, and discovered that we were from the same family... but I'm not exactly sure what our relation is... It was she who later said that she was my cousin; I didn't say that".^[21]

Peres told Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson that he had been born as a result of a blessing his parents had received from a chassidic rebbe and that he was proud of it.^[22] Peres's grandfather, Rabbi Zvi Meltzer, a grandson of Rabbi Chaim Volozhin, had a great impact on his life. In an interview, Peres said: "As a child, I grew up in my grandfather's home. … I was educated by him. … My grandfather taught me Talmud. It was not as easy as it sounds. My home was not an observant one. My parents were not Orthodox but I was Haredi. At one point, I heard my parents listening to the radio on the Sabbath and I smashed it."^[23] When he was a child, Peres was taken by his father to Radun to receive a blessing from Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan (known as "the Chofetz Chaim").^[24] As a child, Peres would later say, "I did not dream of becoming president of Israel. My dream as a boy was to be a shepherd or a poet of stars."^[25] He inherited his love of French literature from his maternal grandfather.^[26]

In 1932, Peres's father immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv. The family followed him in 1934.^[19] He attended Balfour Elementary School and High School, and Geula Gymnasium (High School for Commerce) in Tel Aviv. At 15, he transferred to Ben Shemen agricultural school and lived on Kibbutz Geva for several years.^[19] Peres was one of the founders of KibbutzAlumot.

In 1941, he was elected Secretary of HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed, a Labor Zionist youth movement, and in 1944 returned to Alumot, where he had an agricultural training and worked as a farmer and a shepherd.^[27]

At age 20, he was elected to the HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed national secretariat, where he was only one of two Mapai party supporters, out of the 12 members. Three years later, he took over the movement and won a majority. The head of Mapai, David Ben-Gurion, and Berl Katznelson began to take an interest in him, and appointed him to Mapai's secretariat.^[28]

In 1944, Peres led an illicit expedition into the Negev, then a closed military zone requiring a permit to enter. The expedition, consisting of a group of teenagers, along with a Palmach scout, a zoologist, and an archaeologist, had been funded by Ben-Gurion and planned by Palmach head Yitzhak Sadeh, as part of a plan for future Jewish settlement of the area so as to include it in the Jewish state.^[29] The group was arrested by a Bedouin camel patrol led by a British officer, taken to Beersheba (then a small Arab town) and incarcerated in the local jail. All of the participants were sentenced to two weeks in prison, and as the leader, Peres was also heavily fined.^[30] The expedition came across a nest of bearded vultures, called peres in Hebrew, and from this Peres took his Hebrew name.^[31]

All of Peres's relatives who remained in Wiszniew in 1941 were murdered during the Holocaust,^[32] many of them (including Rabbi Meltzer) burned alive in the town's synagogue.^[33]

In 1945, Peres married Sonya Gelman, who preferred to remain outside the public eye. They had three children.^[34]

In 1946, Peres and Moshe Dayan were chosen as the two youth delegates in the Mapai delegation to the Zionist Congress in Basel.^[28]

In 1947, Peres joined the Haganah, the predecessor of the Israel Defense Forces. David Ben-Gurion made him responsible for personnel and arms purchases; he was appointed to head the naval service when Israel received independence in 1948.^[29]

Peres was director of the Defense Ministry's delegation in the United States in the early 1950s. While in the U.S. he studied English, economics, and philosophy at The New School and New York University, and completed a four-month advanced management course at Harvard University.^{[19][35][36][37]}

Director General of Defense (1953-1959)

In 1952, Peres was appointed deputy director general of the Ministry of Defense, and the following year, he was promoted to director general.^[29] At age 29, he was the youngest person to hold this position.^[38] He was involved in arms purchases and establishing strategic alliances that were important for the State of Israel. He was instrumental in establishing close relations with France, securing massive amounts of quality arms that, in turn, helped to tip the balance of power in the region.^[39]

In 1955, he testified against Minister of Defense Pinhas Lavon in what became known as the Lavon Affair.^{[citation needed]}

Owing to Peres's mediation, Israel acquired the advanced Dassault Mirage III French jet fighter, established the Dimona nuclear reactor and entered into a tri-national agreement with France and the United Kingdom, positioning Israel in what would become the 1956 Suez Crisis. Peres continued as a primary intermediary in the close French-Israeli alliance from the mid-1950s,^[29] although from 1958, he was often involved in tense negotiations with Charles de Gaulle over the Dimona project.^[40]

Peres is considered to have been the architect of Israel's secret nuclear weapons program in the 1960s, and he stated that, in the 1960s, he recruited Arnon Milchan, an Israeli-American Hollywood film producer, billionaire businessman, and secret arms dealer and intelligence operative, to work for the Israeli Bureau of Scientific Relations (LEKEM or LAKAM), a secret intelligence organization tasked with obtaining military technology and science espionage.^[41]

1956 Suez Crisis

Main article: Suez Crisis

From 1954, as director general of the Ministry of Defense, Peres was involved in the planning of the 1956 Suez War, in partnership with France and Britain. Peres was sent by David Ben-Gurion to Paris, where he held secret meetings with the French government.^[42] Peres was instrumental in negotiating the Franco-Israeli agreement for a military offensive.^[43] In November 1954, Peres visited Paris, where he was received by the French Defense Minister Marie-Pierre Kœnig, who told him that France would sell Israel any weapons it wanted to buy.^[44] By early 1955, France was shipping large amounts of weapons to Israel.^[44] In April 1956, following another visit to Paris by Peres, France agreed to disregard the Tripartite Declaration, and supply more weapons to Israel.^[45] During the same visit, Peres informed the French that Israel had decided upon war with Egypt in 1956.^[46] Throughout the 1950s, an extraordinarily close relationship existed between France and Israel, characterised by unprecedented cooperation in the fields of defense and diplomacy. For his work as the architect of this relationship, Peres was awarded the highest order of the French, the Legion of Honor, as Commander.^[38][47]

At Sèvres, Peres took part in planning alongside Maurice Bourgès-Maunoury, Christian Pineau and Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces General Maurice Challe, and British Foreign SecretarySelwyn Lloyd and his assistant Sir Patrick Dean.^[8] Britain and France enlisted Israeli support for an alliance against Egypt. The parties agreed that Israel would invade the Sinai. Britain and France would then intervene, purportedly to separate the warring Israeli and Egyptian forces, instructing both to withdraw to a distance of 16 kilometres from either side of the canal.^[48] The British and French would then argue, according to the plan, that Egypt's control of such an important route was too tenuous, and that it needed be placed under Anglo-French management. The agreement at Sèvres was initially described by British Prime Minister Anthony Eden as the "highest form of statesmanship".^[9] The three allies, especially Israel, were mainly successful in attaining their immediate military objectives. However, the extremely hostile reaction to the Suez Crisis from both the United States and the USSR forced them to withdraw, resulting in a failure of Britain and France's political and strategic aims of controlling the Suez Canal.

Early Knesset career (1959–1974)

Peres was first elected to the Knesset in the 1959 elections^[49][29] as a member of the Mapai party.^[38] He was given the role of deputy minister of defense, which he filled until 1965 (holding this position in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th governments of Israel under Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol).^[38] In this position, he held negotiations with John F. Kennedy, which concluded with the sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel, the first sale of US military equipment to Israel.^[10] Peres expressed great appreciation and praise for the American decision to sell Hawk missiles in a speech to the Knesset on 25 June 1963.^[50]

Peres resigned from the 12th government in late May 1965, citing the growing rift between Prime Minister Eshkol and former prime minister Ben-Gurion (Peres was aligned with Ben Gurion).^[51][52] In 1965, Peres and Moshe Dayan were among those that left Mapai with David Ben-Gurion when Ben-Gurion formed a new party, Rafi.^[38] Peres was a co-founder of the Rafi party.^[53] The party reconciled with Mapai in 1968, merging to form the Israeli Labor Party. The Labor Party then joined the Alignment (a left-wing alliance).^[38]

In 1969, Peres was appointed minister of immigrant absorption in the 15th government (led by Prime Minister Golda Meir), and in 1970 (also in the 15th government), he became minister of transportation and communications.^[38] After this, he served as minister of information in the Meir-led 16th government.^[29][38]

Minister of Defense (1974–1977)

Peres was appointed minister of defense in the Yitzhak Rabin-led 17th government, after having been Rabin's chief rival for the post of Labor Party leader (and, in effect, the Israeli premiership) in the 1974 Israeli Labor Party leadership election that was held after Golda Meir resigned in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.^[29][38]

1976 Entebbe rescue operation

Main article: Operation Entebbe

On 27 June 1976, Peres, as minister of defense, in collaboration with Prime Minister Rabin, handled Israel's response to a coordinated act of terrorism when 248 Paris-bound travelers on an Air France plane were taken hostage by pro-Palestinian hijackers and flown to Uganda, Africa, 2,000 miles away.

Peres and Rabin were responsible for approving what became known as the "Operation Entebbe", which took place on 4 July 1976. The rescue boosted the Rabin government's approval rating with the public.^[54] The only Israeli soldier that was killed during the successful rescue operation was its commander, 30-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu, older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu.^[55]

Before Rabin ultimately approved the rescue mission, he and Peres were at odds on how to proceed. Rabin was open to acquiescing to the terrorists' demands to release forty Palestinian militants if no military option presented itself. Peres, however, felt acquiescing to be a nonstarter, believing it would encourage further terrorism.^[56] Rabin initially took steps to begin negotiations with the terrorists, seeing no other option. Peres felt that negotiating with terrorists would, in effect, be a surrender, and thought a rescue operation should be planned.^[57]

Peres organized a secret Israel Crisis Committee to come up with a rescue plan. When a plan had been made, he met with commander Netanyahu a number of times.^[58] During one of their final private meetings, they both examined maps and went over precise details. Peres later said of Netanyahu's explanation, "My impression was one of exactitude and imagination," saying that Netanyahu seemed confident the operation would succeed with almost no losses.^[58] Netanyahu left the meeting understanding that Peres would do everything in his power to see that the operation went smoothly.^[58] Peres then went unannounced to Moshe Dayan, the former minister of Defense, interrupting his dinner with friends in a restaurant, to show him the latest plan to get his opinion. Peres told Dayan of the objections that had been raised by Rabin and Chief of Staff, Mordechai Gur. Dayan dismissed the objections after reviewing the written details: "Shimon," he said, "this is a plan that I support not one hundred percent but one hundred and fifty percent! There has to be a military operation."^[57] Peres later got the approval from Gur, who became fully supportive.^[57] Peres then took the plan to Rabin, who had been lukewarm and still didn't like the risks, but he reluctantly approved the plan after Peres answered a number of key questions and Rabin learned that the cabinet had also endorsed it.^[59]

Shortly after the mission ended, Rabin recounted, "we called into my office seven of our top commanders...I told our friends in uniform that the honor of the Jewish people, their destinies, are challenged and what we are considering is not just a calculated risk in the military sense, but a comparative risk, which exists between surrender to terror and daring rescue stemming from independence."^[60]

After the success of the operation, Peres angled to receive some of the credit and adulation, somewhat competing with Rabin for credit.^[60]

Unsuccessful February 1977 campaign for Labor Party leader

Main article: February 1977 Israeli Labor Party leadership election

In February 1977, Peres challenged Prime Minister Rabin for the leadership of Labor Party, but lost to Rabin in a narrow 50.72% to 49.28% result in the vote by the party's Central Committee.^{[61][29][62][63]} The leadership election was expected to determine who would lead the party into the 1977 Knesset election. This was at moment when Labor was threatened with the prospect of losing its control of government after 28-consecutive years due to the rise of both the right-wingLikud bloc and the centristDemocratic Movement for Change, which were seen as collectively cutting into the Labor Party's support in the upcoming election. At the time, Rabin and Peres presented little policy difference, with Peres being seen as only slightly to the right of Rabin on domestic matters. Instead of positioning himself in contrast to the incumbent Rabin on policy, Peres instead capitalized off of the political atmosphere and staked his candidacy largely on an argument that the Labor Party needed to satisfy the nation's desire for change by choosing a new leader for itself.^[62]

Unofficial acting premiership (1977)

On 7 April 1977, Prime Minister Rabin announced that, in the wake of a foreign currency scandal involving his wife, he would be stepping down prior to the 1977 Knesset election.^[64] Peres made himself a candidate to replace him as the new Labor Party leader. Initially, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon also made himself a candidate. However, Allon and Peres reached an agreement that Peres would appoint Allon to any ministerial position that Allon preferred in exchange from his withdrawal of his candidacy. Following Allon's withdrawal, the Labor Party leadership announced on 10 April 1977 that he had chosen to endorse Peres as the party's new leader. On 11 April 1977, the 815-member Central Committee of the party elected Peres by acclamation as the party's new leader.^[61][65][66]

Rabin ended his active service as prime minister on 22 April 1977, and Peres became Israel's unofficial acting prime minister. The reason why Peres was not officially the holder of this office was that Rabin could not, under Israeli law, resign from his position as prime minister because the government was, at the time, a caretaker government.^{[38][67][68][69][70]}

In his first election as party leader, Peres led Labor Party and the Alignment coalition to its first ever electoral defeat, and the result afforded the first-place Likud party (led by Menachem Begin) the ability to form a coalition that excluded the left. When the new Likud-led government was formed on 20 June 1977^[71] Peres' time as the unofficial acting prime minister ended.

Labor in opposition (1977–1984)

Once the Likud-led government took power, Labor and the Alignment bloc entered the Knesset opposition for the first time in its history,^[72] and Peres assumed the unofficial role of Knesset opposition leader.^[53]

In 1978, Peres was elected vice president of Socialist International.^[73] Through his role within the leadership of this organization, Peres befriended foreign politicians including Willy Brandt, Bruno Kreisky, members of the British Labour Party, and politicians from parts of Africa and Asia.^[74]

After handily winning reelection as Labor Party leader in 1980 (defeating a challenge from Rabin, who was attempting a comeback to the leadership),^[61] Peres led his party to another, narrower, loss in the 1981 elections.

Grand coalition governments and first premiership (1984–1988)

In the 1984 elections (Peres' third election as Labor Party leader), the Alignment coalition won more seats than any other party, but the left-wing failed to win the majority of 61 seats needed to form a coalition on their own. Alignment and Likud agreed to an unusual “rotation" arrangement to form a grand coalition unity government during which, for the first twenty-five months, Peres would serve as prime minister and the Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir would be foreign minister, with the two swapping positions thereafter for the second half of the term.^[29][38][75]

First premiership (1984–1986)

See also: Twenty-first government of Israel

Peres was regarded to be a popular prime minister in his two years as premier under the rotation arrangement.^[76] During a portion of his premiership, he also held the position of minister of religious affairs.^[53]

Military policy and international relations

Among the most noteworthy moments of his first tenure as prime minister was Operation Wooden Leg (a long-range Israeli airstrike against the PLO headquarters in Tunisia) and a trip to Morocco to confer with King Hassan II.^[77][78]

In 1985, Peres publicly supported the quick pursuit of a military pullback from Beirut to Israel's south Lebanon security belt.^[79] A partial Israeli pullback had earlier been approved in 1983 by the Begin-headed Likud-led government that had been in power at that time.^[80]

1985 Israel Economic Stabilization Plan

Main article: 1985 Israel Economic Stabilization Plan

A major domestic policy decision of Peres' first premiership was the implementation of the 1985 Israel Economic Stabilization Plan.

By 1985, Israel's economic fortunes were looking dire, with immense and quickly rising inflation (Israel was experiencing hyperinflation), a government budget deficit equal to between twelve and fifteen percent of the nation's GDP and national debt equal to 220% of the nation's GDP, and Israel's foreign currency reserves were quickly dissipating.^[81] With the assistance of the government of the United States, Peres assembled a board of American economist to advise him on the situation. Conditional on him implementing reforms, Peres secured emergency economic assistance from the United States of $750 million (equivalent to 3.5% of the nation's GDP at the time) annually over a two-year period.^[82]

Peres was initially hesitant to take the drastic measures that he ultimately would pursue, as they had the strong potential of proving unpopular and came with a risk of potentially creating a drastic increase in unemployment.^[82] Peres ultimately was convinced to push through the 1985 Israel Economic Stabilization Plan. Once convinced, he was assertive in pushing for the passage of the program, which was quickly after approved by his cabinet on 1 July 1985. This program had quick success in improving the course of the Israeli economy. By the end of the year, inflation immensely decreased. Additionally, the shekel stabilized and the government balanced its budget. While Israel would subsequently slide into a recession, the stabilization has been regarded as an important and greatly successful model for addressing economies in crisis, and has been credited with saving the nation's economy.^[81][82][83]

Minister of Foreign Affairs (1986–1988)

As per the rotation arrangement, after Peres' two years as prime minister he and Shamir traded places in 1986. Shamir became prime minister of the new twenty-second government of Israel and Peres became foreign minister as well as the designated acting prime minister of Israel.

Minister of Finance (1988–1990)

In 1988 the Alignment, led by Peres, suffered another narrow defeat. This came despite the fact that polling in 1988 showed Peres to be the most popular politician in the nation.^[84] Peres agreed to renew the grand coalition with the Likud, this time conceding the premiership to Shamir for the entire term. In the grand coalition unity government of 1988–90 (the twenty-third government of Israel), Peres served as minister of finance and also continued to be the designated acting prime minister of Israel.

Return to opposition (1990–1992)

"The dirty trick"

Peres and the Alignment finally left the government in 1990, after "the dirty trick" – a failed bid by Peres to form a narrow government based on a coalition of the Alignment, small leftist factions and ultra-orthodox parties.^[85] Peres' hope had been to create a Labor-led government that would be focused on peace talks with Palestine. Likud had declined proposals by the United States for Israel and Palestine to initiate what would have been the first peace talks between the two sides. Peres' longtime intra-party rival, Yizhak Rabin, had opposed to overthrowing the Likud-led coalition government.^[76] Peres succeeded in ending the government twenty-third government with a vote of no confidence.^[75] However, Peres was subsequently unable to assemble enough Knesset partners to form a pro-peace talk government.^[76] After two months, Shamir managed to form a Likud-led government with right-wing religious parties, establishing what was seen as the most conservative government coalition in the history of Israel up to that point.^[75][76]

Defeat in the 1992 Labor Party leadership election

Peres led the opposition in the Knesset from 1990 until early 1992, when he was defeated by Yitzhak Rabin in the Israeli Labor Party leadership election, the first leadership election held since the party formally merged with the other parties of Alignment, and the first leadership election open to participation by the party's entire membership.^[29][61] Peres remained active in politics, however.^[29]

Rabin government (1992–1995)

After the Labor Party was successful in the 1992 Knesset election and Rabin became prime minister again, Peres became foreign minister in the Rabin-led twenty-fifth government of Israel.^[29] Peres had previously served as foreign minister from 1986 through 1988.

Israel–Jordan peace treaty

On 26 October 1994, Jordan and Israel signed the Israel–Jordan peace treaty,^[12] which had been initiated by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. The ceremony was held in the Arava valley of Israel, north of Eilat and near the Jordanian border. Prime Minister Rabin and Prime Minister Abdelsalam al-Majali signed the treaty and the President of IsraelEzer Weizman shook hands with King Hussein. United States President Bill Clinton observed, accompanied by United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher, as well as the foreign ministers of eleven other nations (including Russia, which had joined the United States as a formal co-sponsor of the peace talks that led to the treaty). The treaty brought an end to 46 years of official war between Israel and Jordan. It was only the second full peace agreement that Israel had reached with an Arab nation, after the Camp David Accords signed with Egypt in 1978.^[86]

Oslo peace process with Palestine

Main article: Oslo Accords

Rabin's 1992 campaign for Labor had primarily been run on the idea of negotiating peace with the Palestinians. This campaign had succeeded as a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was popular among the Israeli public at the time. The twenty-fifth government of Israel was arguably more pro-peace government than any previous Israeli government.^[75] It would begin negotiations with the Yasser Arafat-led Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Peres was involved in secret peace negotiations between Prime Minister Rabin's government and Arafat's PLO organization. These negotiations were held over several months in 1992 and 1993. As part of the negotiations, Peres secretly flew to Oslo, Norway on 19 August 1993. The ultimate agreement outlined a peace process between Israel and Palestine, which would include the establishment of an interim Palestinian government within both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. On 13 September 1993, Peres signed the initial Oslo I Accord on behalf of the Israeli government in a ceremony at the United States' White House, with Rabin in attendance.^[87]

In 1994, in recognition of the Oslo Accords, Peres, Rabin and Arafat were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.^[87] This was the second (and most recent) instance in which an Israeli was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin had previously jointly received the honor with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978. This was also the second time that the award had been given in recognition of middle east peacemaking efforts, with the 1978 award having been the previous instance of this.^[88] The awarding of the prize to the three has not been without controversy. After it was decided they would be given the award, Kåre Kristiansen resigned from the Nobel Peace Prize committee in protest of Arafat receiving the award, believing Arafat to be, "too tainted by violence, terror and torture".^[88] In 2002, a number of members of the Norwegian committee that awards the annual Nobel Peace Prize would state they regretted that Mr. Peres's prize could not be recalled. Because he had not acted to prevent Israel's re-occupation of Palestinian territory, he had not lived up to the ideals he expressed when he accepted the prize, and he was involved in human rights abuses.^[89]

Negotiations on further terms continued, with Peres continuing to be an integral player.^[90][91] On 28 September 1995, Rabin and Arafat jointly signed a second major agreement, which has popularly been referred to as "Oslo II".^[87][90]

Second premiership (1995–1996)

See also: Twenty-fifth government of Israel and Twenty-sixth government of Israel

While the Oslo peace policies, at the time, enjoyed the support of most Israelis, they also faced intense opposition from extreme members of Israel’s right-wing.^[75] In response to intense street protests by right-wing opponents of the Oslo peace process, a coalition of left-wing parties and peace groups organized a rally in support of the peace process in Tel Aviv's Kings Square on 4 November 1995, which both Prime Minister Rabin and Peres attended. While making his way from the stage to his car after concluding his speech to the gathered crowd of more than 100,000 people, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Israeli Jew who opposed the peace process.^{[87][92][93][94][95]}

After Rabin's assassination, Peres was made acting prime minister and acting defense minister of a provisional government.^[38][93][96] On 14 November 1995, the Labor Party confirmed Peres as its new leader, which thereby cleared the last formality before he could be invited by President Ezer Weizman to form a new government.^[61][97] On 15 November 1995, Peres was invited by to form a new government. On 21 November, Peres signed a coalition agreement between Labor, Meretz and Yiud (which had been members of Rabin's government), which was formally approved by the Knesset the next day, establishing a new government with Peres as prime minister.^[96]

Peres' second stint as prime minister ultimately lasted a total of seven months. During this time, he attempted to maintain the momentum of the peace process.^[38]

On 10 February 1996, Peres made the widely expected announcement that he would call early elections, moving the elections to late May, five months earlier than they otherwise were to be held. The election would be the first to use a new system in which the prime minister was directly elected in a vote coinciding with the Knesset election.^[95] Peres had hoped that early elections would deliver a mandate for his pursuit of a two-state solution.^[98] Peres had called the elections early because of promising polls.^[95] He was heavily leading in the polls for the prime minister vote at the time the election was called, with polls showing him to have between a twenty and twenty-five percent lead.^[53][95] Additionally, Labor was also leading in polls for the Knesset vote. Despite the promising polls, however, some in Labor had, even at this time, expressed concerns about the ability of Peres to win, given his failure to deliver an outright win for the Labor Party during his earlier stint as party leader.^[95] His lead in the polls began to decrease after the Jaffa Road bus bombings on 25 February 1996. However, even in the last month before the election, he enjoyed a reduced leading margin of around five percent.^[53]

On 11 April 1996, Peres initiated Operation Grapes of Wrath,^[99] which was triggered by HezbollahKatyusha rockets fired into Israel in response to the killing of two Lebanese by an IDF missile. Israel conducted massive air raids and extensive shelling in southern Lebanon. 106 Lebanese civilians died in the shelling of Qana, when a UN compound was hit in an Israeli shelling.^[100]

During his term, Peres promoted the use of the internet in Israel and created the first website of an Israeli prime minister.^[101]

Post-premiership (1996–2007)

Labor in opposition (1996–1999)

Peres was narrowly defeated by Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1996 Israeli prime ministerial election. Not included in the new government, Labor became an opposition party again. This again placed Peres in the then-unofficial role of Knesset opposition leader.

In 1996, Peres founded the Peres Center for Peace, which has the aim of "promot[ing] lasting peace and advancement in the Middle East by fostering tolerance, economic and technological development, cooperation and well-being."^[13]

Peres did not seek re-election as Labor Party leader in 1997^[101] and was replaced by Ehud Barak that year.^[102] Barak rebuffed Peres' attempt to secure the position of party president.^[101]

Minister of Regional Cooperation (1999–2001)

In 1999, Ehud Barak was elected prime minister and formed a Labor-lead government. He appointed Peres (who was seen as a political rival of Barak) to the minor post of minister of regional cooperation.^[101][103] The position was vaguely defined, being expected to be tasked with advancing economic and political ties between Israel and the Arab world.^[104][103] The position also did not come with any government funding.^[103] Peres accepted the relatively low-ranked position reluctantly.^[104] For nearly all of time in this position Peres was sidelined, finding himself disallowed from playing a major role within the government.^[105]