Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres (1923–2016), born Szymon Perski in Wiszniew (then Poland, now Belarus), emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1934 and became one of Israel's longest-serving public figures, holding nearly every senior office over a seven-decade career.

Peres entered government in the 1950s under David Ben-Gurion, serving as director-general of the Defense Ministry, where he played a central role in building Israel's defense industries and is widely credited with shepherding the Dimona nuclear program. He later held the portfolios of defense, foreign affairs, and finance, and led the Labor Party for much of the 1977–2005 period.

He served as prime minister twice: first in a rotation government with Yitzhak Shamir (1984–1986), during which he is credited with halting hyperinflation through the 1985 Economic Stabilization Plan and withdrawing IDF forces from most of Lebanon; and again in 1995–1996 following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. As foreign minister under Rabin, Peres conducted the back-channel negotiations in Norway that produced the Oslo Accords (Declaration of Principles, signed 13 September 1993 in Washington). For this work he shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Yasser Arafat.

Peres lost the 1996 election to Benjamin Netanyahu, narrowly, in the first direct vote for prime minister. In 2005 he left Labor to join Ariel Sharon's new Kadima party. The Knesset elected him president of Israel in 2007, and he served a single seven-year term until 2014, using the largely ceremonial office to promote regional dialogue and technology investment through the Peres Center for Peace, which he founded in 1996.

His record is contested: admirers cite Oslo and Israel's high-tech transformation; critics on the right view Oslo as a strategic error, while critics on the left point to settlement expansion and the 1996 Qana shelling during Operation Grapes of Wrath. He died on 28 September 2016.