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Comments (0)Shimon Peres has had one of the longest political careers of any Israeli politician.
He immigrated to Israel from Poland at age 11. While he took the Hagannah’s defense training, he never actively served in the military. Yet in 1953, at 29, he became director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry. He is widely acknowledged to have crafted Israel’s still-secret nuclear arsenal.
Peres joined the Knesset in 1959; he resigned only last year when he was elected president of Israel. He served as Prime Minister from 1984-1986 and from 1995-1996.
One of his career’s most notable moments came in 1976. As defense minister he oversaw Operation Entebbe, the daring hostage-rescue mission by the Israel Defense Force at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, which followed the Palestinian terrorist hijacking of an Air France flight.
As foreign minister in the 1990s, Peres was the architect of the Oslo Accords, for which he received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize.
Though he is considered left-wing today, in his early political career Peres was a security hawk. In the mid-1970s he played a large role in approving the Jewish settlement of the West Bank.
Today Peres is well known worldwide and enjoys relationships with leading political figures across the globe.