Shimon Peres, former Israeli president and prime minister, has died at the age of 93. Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, was one of the country's most admired leaders and the last surviving link to its founding fathers. In a career spanning nearly seven decades, Peres served in a dozen cabinets and twice as Labour Party prime minister, but he never won a general election outright in five tries from 1977 to 1996.
He was born Szymon Perski on 2 August 1923, in Vishneva, then part of Poland (now in Belarus). He moved to pre-state Palestine with his family in 1934. His grandfather and other relatives who stayed behind were killed in the Holocaust.
Rising quickly through Labor Party ranks, he became a top aide to David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. He oversaw arms purchases and manpower in the Hagana, the Zionist fighting force, before Israel's establishment. At 29, he was the youngest person to serve as director of Israel's defence ministry. Peres is widely seen as having gained nuclear capabilities for Israel by procuring the secret Dimona reactor from France in the 1950s.
As defence minister he oversaw the dramatic 1976 rescue of hijacked Israelis at Entebbe airport in Uganda.
He was popular in his first term as prime minister in 1984-86 as part of a power-sharing pact with Likud. He pulled troops back from Lebanon, normalised relations with Egypt and cut inflation from 445% a year to below 20%. However, most Israelis, hardened by frequent conflict, dismissed his vision that a new age for the Middle East was dawning hand-in-hand with peace deals. He was seen abroad as an urbane diplomat but at home often as an ego-driven manipulator in domestic politics who eroded his party's identity out of a thirst for cabinet posts after election losses to Likud.
July 1976: Israeli Defence Minister Shimon Peres addresses paratroops after the completion of Operation Entebbe. The raid took place on 3 July 1976 and resulted in the rescue, by Israeli special forces, of 100 hostages who were being held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of PalestineKeystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images1 October 1984: Sonya Peres is pictured sitting next to her husband, Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Sonya Peres died on 20 January 2011 at the age of 87GPO/Reuters15 July 1986: Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres sits in front of a Star of DavidGPO/Reuters15 September 1986: US President Ronald Reagan meets Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in the White HouseGPO/Getty Images
He shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Israel's late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for a 1993 accord that they and their successors failed to turn into a durable treaty. When a far-right Jewish Israeli opposed to the peace deal assassinated Rabin in November 1995, the torch passed to Peres. But Palestinian suicide bombings that killed dozens of Israelis and an aggressive campaign by Likud battered Peres's rating and he lost the 1996 election to Benjamin Netanyahu by less than 30,000 votes.
In 2005, Peres left the Labour Party to join then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new party, Kadima, which had spearheaded Israel's unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip earlier that year. Following Kadima's 2006 election victory, Peres served as vice prime minister.
13 September 1993: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres signs the Israeli-PLO peace accord, with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and US President Bill Clinton standing behind him during a ceremony at the White HouseGary Hershorn/Reuters10 December 1994: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin show their shared Nobel Peace Prize awards to the audience in the Oslo City HallJerry Lampen/Reuters20 October 1996: South African President Nelson Mandela exchanges views with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres after their meeting in Cape TownReuters11 January 1999: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat greets former Israeli Prime Minister and fellow Nobel laureate Shimon Peres in the West Bank city of RamallahMenahem Kahana/AFP
In 2007, he was elected president, a largely ceremonial role but one that earned him the kind of national admiration that eluded him throughout his lengthy career. He completed his presidential term in 2014, remaining active at his peace centre until suffering a debilitating stroke on 13 September 2016. He died two weeks later, on 28 September 2016.
20 November 2008: The Queen receives Israel's President Shimon Peres at Buckingham Palace. During the meeting the Queen presented him with the order of St Michael and St GeorgeKatie Collins/Reuters24 February 2009: Israeli President Shimon Peres and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert make a toast during the swearing-in ceremony of Israel's new knesset in JerusalemJim Hollander/AFP3 March 2009: Israel's President Shimon Peres kisses US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as he gives her flowers after their meeting in JerusalemAmmar Awad/Reuters3 February 2011: Israeli President Shimon Peres visits the police counterterrorist unit at an unidentified location in IsraelGPO/Getty Images6 March 2012: Israeli President Shimon Peres writes on a blackboard with Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, CaliforniaReuters13 June 2012: US President Barack Obama presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Israeli President Shimon Peres in the East Room of the White HouseJason Reed/Reuters19 June 2012: Israeli President Shimon Peres stands next to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger after awarding him the medal of honour during the 4th Israeli Presidential Conference in JerusalemAFP30 April 2013: Pope Francis greets Israeli President Shimon Peres during a private meeting at the VaticanReuters15 April 2013: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chats with President Shimon Peres during a ceremony marking Remembrance Day for the fallen soldiers on Mount Herzl Military Cemetery, in JerusalemJim Hollander/AFP24 July 2014: Israel's President Shimon Peres goes over his speech for the swearing-in ceremony of the new President, on his last day in officeRonen Zvulun/Reuters