Shimon Peres, one of Israel’s defining political figures and a Nobel peace prize laureate, has died at the age of 93, two weeks after having a stroke.
Peres had twice served as prime minister of Israel
and later as the country’s ninth president. He had been seriously ill
on a respirator in an Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv and died after his
condition deteriorated sharply.
One of Israel’s defining political
figures and a Nobel peace prize laureate dies at the age of 93, two
weeks after having a stroke. Follow the latest updates here.
His defining achievement was as one of the key architects of the Oslo peace accords,
for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize with the then
Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman
of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Peres’s death was formally confirmed on
Wednesday, September 28, 2016 morning by his son Chemi in a news
conference at the hospital where his father had been treated.
“Today with deep sorrow we bid farewell
to our beloved father, the ninth president of Israel,” he said. “Our
father’s legacy has always been to look to tomorrow. We were privileged
to be part of his private family, but today we sense that the entire
nation of Israel and the global community share this great loss. We
share this pain together.”
Reports in the Israeli media said that
the former president’s coffin will lie in state in the Israeli
parliament, the Knesset, on Thursday ahead of his funeral on Friday.
Within hours of his death, tributes to
Peres began from world leaders. In a statement, President Barack Obama
described him as “the essence of Israel itself”.
He added: “As Americans, we are in his
debt because, having worked with every US president since John F
Kennedy, no one did more over so many years as Shimon Peres to build the
alliance between our two countries – an unbreakable alliance that today
is closer and stronger than it has ever been.”
Former president George HW Bush also
praised “his unyielding determination and principle”. “Shimon Peres time
and again helped guide his beloved country through the crucible of
mortal challenge.”
Former president Bill Clinton and
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said they had “lost a
true and treasured friend” following news of the death. The Clintons
said Israel had lost a leader “who championed its security, prosperity
and limitless possibilities from its birth to his last day on Earth”.
They called him “a genius with a big heart who used his gifts to imagine a future of reconciliation, not conflict”.
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