Former Israeli president, Shimon Peres, dies aged 93

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.

Mr 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.

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.

Mr Peres’s death was formally confirmed on Wednesday 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.”

Within hours of his death, tributes to Peres began from world leaders.

President Michael D Higgins said he had learned of his death with “great sadness”. His “life mirrored some of the great dramas of 20th century Europe and the Middle East and he shall be remembered for his courage that saw him change course from confrontation to reconciliation,” he said.

In a statement following his death, US president Barack Obama described Mr Peres as: “the essence of Israel itself”. 

“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,” he said.

Former US president president George H W 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 Peres “a genius with a big heart who used his gifts to imagine a future of reconciliation, not conflict”.

‘Man of peace’

Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said: “Shimon Peres was, above all, a man of peace and a man dedicated to the wellbeing of the Jewish people” who he said was “was devoted to promoting understanding between his country and its neighbours, and shared a Nobel peace prize for his efforts to create peace in the Middle East”.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan said he was a “great statesman” and was “forst and foremost” a “voice for peace”.

“I hope that his life and his leadership will inspire future generations of leaders committed to establishing lasting peace in the region to make that aspiration a reality.”

Mr Peres was rushed to hospital on 13 September after he reported feeling ill. After several tests he was diagnosed as having had a stroke.

The last surviving figure associated with the founding of modern Israel, Peres’s life story tracked many of the most important moments in the country’s short history, which saw him move from being a hawk to a peacemaker – a legacy that substantially unravelled in recent years, to his dismay.

Long a deeply divisive figure in Israeli politics, in later life Peres became one of the country’s most popular public figures, serving a seven-year term as president from 2007-14.

“In his people’s eyes he ceased to be a politician. He became an historic figure, larger than politics, larger than everyday affairs, a figure in a league of his own,” the Yediot Ahronot columnist Nahum Barnea wrote shortly after he became ill, in one among many retrospectives of his long career.

Even after his presidential term ended, Mr Peres remained a high-profile figure who continued to make interventions on the country’s political direction and sought to maintain an active schedule, particularly through events related to his Peres Centre for Peace.

Peres had had several health scares this year and was admitted to hospital twice because of heart problems. In the first case, the hospital said he had suffered a “mild cardiac event” and underwent catheterisation to widen an artery. He was rushed to hospital again just days later with chest pains and an irregular heartbeat.