For Palestinians Shimon Peres was a hawk disguised as a dove
JERUSALEM // The death of Shimon Peres, the former Israeli president, was greeted with a stony silence from Arab leaders on Wednesday amid the outpouring of tributes from western politicians. 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…