Shimon Peres, Israel's Flawed Visionary

Published in The Telegraph UK, 28 September 2016

Margaret Thatcher with Shimon Peres CREDIT: FOX PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

Shimon Peres, Israel’s elder statesman, who died early on Wednesday at the age of 93, served his country with distinction for almost seventy years.
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Peres was a flawed visionary and beset by contradictions: he was determined to achieve peace with Israel’s Arab neighbours, but couldn’t shake off the hawkish instincts he had developed as the protégé of Israel’s veteran statesman, David Ben Gurion. He was bold and far-sighted in seeking an agreement with Jordan’s King Hussein in 1987, but his caution undermined it. Peres was greatly distrusted both by his colleagues within the Labour party, his rivals in the Likud and the wider Israeli public. In his memoirs, Yitzhak Rabin described Peres as “the indefatigable subverter.”   READ MORE