Peres, who died early on Wednesday aged 93, won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.
As the last surviving founding father of the Jewish state, he was revered in Israel and praised as a statesman. But in the Arab world and particularly for Palestinians, Peres was a deeply controversial figure.
His role in a now defunct peace process has been called into question, but he is most reviled for his hawkish early years, when he was a leading military figure in the formation of the Israeli state on Palestinian land.
Peres was key to the wars that followed against Arab countries and spearheaded the development of Israel’s secret nuclear programme, cementing the state’s military dominance in the region. In 1996, as prime minister, he oversaw a war in Lebanon in which more than 100 civilians were killed in an Israeli artillery strike on the village of Qana.
Perhaps most unforgivable for Palestinians and detrimental to the peace process, was that he allowed settlement construction to continue on illegally occupied Palestinain land during his years in leadership positions. Continue reading “For Palestinians Shimon Peres was a hawk disguised as a dove”