Amir Peretz

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Amir Peretz, MK, Chairman of the Israel Labour Party
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Amir Peretz, MK, Chairman of the Israel Labour Party

Amir Peretz (Hebrew: עמיר פרץ; born March 9, 1952) is an Israeli politician and Defense Minister of Israel. He also is the current leader of the Labour Party of Israel. Peretz is the former chairman of the Histadrut trade union federation and defeated Shimon Peres in the primary elections for the Labour leadership in November 9, 2005. He led the Labour Party to a second place showing in the 2006 Israeli elections. He was sworn in as Defense Minister[1] along with the rest of the new Cabinet of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on May 4, 2006.

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[edit] Early life

Amir Peretz was born as Armand Peretz in the town of Boujad, Morocco. His father was head of the Jewish community in Boujad and owned a petrol station. The family emigrated to Israel in 1956. They were settled in the development town of Sderot, where Peretz graduated from high school.

He served in the Israel Defense Forces as a matériel officer in the 202nd paratroopers brigade and reached the rank of captain. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Peretz was badly wounded at Mitla Pass. He spent a year in the hospital recuperating. After leaving the hospital, he bought a farm in the village of Nir Akiva. Still in a wheelchair, he began growing vegetables and flowers for export. During this period he met his wife Ahlama and they married. They have four children.

[edit] Political career

In 1983, answering a call made by friends, Peretz ran for the office of mayor of the town of Sderot, as candidate of the Israel Labour Party. At only thirty years of age he won a victory which ended a long period of dominance of the town's politics by the right-wing Likud party and the National Religious Party. It was the first in a series of local councils which passed back to Labour control in the late 1980s. As mayor, he strongly emphasized education and worked to improve previously fractious relations with the kibbutzim in the area.

[edit] Histadrut

In 1988 he was elected a member of the Knesset - the Israeli parliament. In 1994, after failing in a previous bid for Histadrut leadership, Peretz joined forces with Haim Ramon to contest control of the then powerful trade union federation. They ran on an independent list against the favoured candidate of then Labour leader Yitzhak Rabin. They won, and Peretz became Ramon's deputy at the Histadrut. This isolated Peretz within the Labour Party. He became chairman of Histadrut in December 1995, when Ramon reentered the cabinet following Rabin's assassination. During his early years at the helm of the Histadrut, Peretz was regarded as a militant firebrand, with an easy hand on the trigger of general strikes. In these years the Israeli economy suffered a high proportion of workday loss due to strikes. Sometimes the pretext for declaring a general strike would be an inopportune statement by the finance minister, as had been the case with Ya'akov Ne'eman in 1996.

However, in his later years as head of Histadrut, Peretz was seen as becoming much more moderate, as he moved toward a potential run for national office. During the tenure of Benjamin Netanyahu as finance minister (February 2003-August 2005), Peretz was fairly cooperative with the government in a series of structural and financial reforms that moved Israel towards a more market-oriented economy. He has remarked that "the most effective strike is the one that didn't occur".

[edit] Am Ehad

In 1999 Peretz resigned from the Labour Party to form his own party, Am Ehad ("One Nation"). Am Ehad won two seats in the Knesset in the General Election of 1999, and three in 2003. As Labour's fortunes changed with the Likud Party in government, and Israel's social programmes being dismantled by the market-oriented reforms of finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Peretz became increasingly popular with Israel's working-class. By the start of 2004 he was being talked of as a "white knight who will rescue Labour from oblivion".[2] After protracted negotiations with then-Labour Party leader Shimon Peres and other party leaders, Am Ehad merged with Labour in the summer of 2004.

[edit] Labour Party leadership

Peretz campaign billboard in Tel Aviv during January, "Ki Higiah Hazman" - Because The Time Has Come
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Peretz campaign billboard in Tel Aviv during January, "Ki Higiah Hazman" - Because The Time Has Come

After the merger, Peretz ran for the leadership of the Labour Party on a platform of ending the coalition with Likud, led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and reasserting Labour's traditional socialist economic policies. Peretz narrowly defeated Peres, the incumbent leader, in the election on 9 November 2005. Peretz won 42% of the votes as against 40% for Peres and 17% for former defence minister and former party leader Benjamin Ben-Eliezer . After winning this election, Peretz resigned from his post at Histadrut to focus on the campaign to become the prime minister. In fulfillment of Peretz's pledge to withdraw Labour from the Likud-led coalition government, the party withdrew its support for the government on 11 November and all Labour Party cabinet ministers resigned. This action deprived the government of its majority in the Knesset and resulted in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calling a new election for March 28, 2006. Shortly thereafter, Sharon and much of his Cabinet left Likud to form a new party, Kadima.

[edit] Election and joining Government

If Labour had won the 2006 election, Amir Peretz would have become the first non-Ashkenazi prime minister in Israel's history. Instead, Labour placed a strong second behind the Kadima Party, led by Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert. Labour agreed to join a coalition government led by Olmert and the Kadima Party. In the negotiations for the formation of the government, Peretz, after attempting to gain the finance ministry, became Defense Minister, replacing Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) in the post. Peretz also received the title of Deputy Prime Minister.

On his first day as Defense Minister, Peretz ordered an airstrike that killed five members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Later, on June 9th, seven Palestinians were killed by an explosion on a Gaza beach [citation needed]. Responding to Palestinian allegations that Israel's armed forces were responsible for the deaths, Peretz initially apologized for the incident, but after the IDF's investigation exonerated the Israeli army Peretz withdrew his earlier apology.

[edit] Views and beliefs

Prior to entering government Peretz maintained that he was strongly committed to social issues and to the strengthening of the welfare state. During his 2005 campaign for the Labor Party leadership, he declared that "within two years of taking office I will have eradicated child poverty in Israel". [1] [2] Notwithstanding, he has also reiterated his commitment to a market economy. For his movement in latter years towards "third way" positions, as well as for his earthy and warm personality, Peretz has been compared more to Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva than Hugo Chavez by Marxist.com.[citation needed]

In matters concerning relations with the Palestinians and the Arab world, candidate Peretz was seen as holding dovish positions.[2] He was one of the early leaders of the Peace Now movement.[3] He was also, in the 1980s, a member of a group of eight Labour party Knesset members, dubbed "the Eight" and led by Yossi Beilin, who tried to set a liberal agenda for the party in matters concerning the peace process with the Palestinians, connecting the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians with the failure to solve Israel's most pressing social ills.

Peretz saw an intrinsic connection between a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the resolving of Israel's internal social tensions. He argued that the resources allotted to the settlements in the West Bank had diverted funds that could have helped to solve social problems throughout Israel. He described the conflict as having mutated Israeli politics, so that the traditional left-right distinctions did not hold: Instead of supporting a social-democratic left which would advance their cause, the lower classes, mostly of Middle Eastern Jewish origins, were diverted to the right by the fanning of nationalist tendencies; Concurrently, the left in Israel was usurped by the well-to-do, so that the Labour party had ironically become elitist. That is why [4]

While Peretz has not repudiated his past views, some have come to view him as hawkish in his attitude to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since his entry into government, especially over the conflict in Lebanon and with the Hamas group in and around the Gaza Strip. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described the Army's actions in Lebanon as "War Crimes".[5][6] Ibrahim Sarsur MK called Peretz a "child murderer" in the aftermath of the 2006 Qana airstrike, while Ahmad Tibi said to Peretz; "you are a man of war, you are no longer a man of peace" [7]

Peretz, in addition to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has come under a torrent of criticism for his handling of the crisis with Lebanon. An Israeli committee, appointed by Defense Minister Amir Peretz, will investigate how the nation's military and security establishment handled the planning and execution of the war on Hezbollah in Lebanon, a defense ministry official told. The committee plans to provide its initial conclusions in three weeks, the official said on August 16 2006.[8]

Prior to his entry into government Peretz promised that he would not enter government with Avigdor Liberman's Israel Beytenu party, which has a platform of removing Arabs from Israel by redrawing Israels boundaries. However, he did not protest when Liberman signed a coalition agreement with Kadima on October 23, 2006, making Israel Beytenu a junior coalition partner,[9] leading the israeli newspaper Haaretz to say that "Amir Peretz has let his voters down in every possible way."[10] One of Labour's ministers, Ophir Pines-Paz, resigned from the government in protest, but Peretz has kept the party in the coalition.

[edit] External links and references

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  1. ^ Peretz - The Guardian
  2. ^ a b General secretary of the Israeli unions becomes leader of the Israeli Labour Party - Marxist.com. 15 November 2005
  3. ^ "Lebanon II: The first war run by Peace Now", 2006-08-02. Retrieved on 2006-08-09.
  4. ^ See this Interview in Ha'aretz - Haaretz.
  5. ^ Amnesty: Israel committed war crimes in Lebanon campaign - Associated press via Haaretz. 23 August 2006
  6. ^ Qana bombs an Israeli 'war crime' - BBC News. 31 July 2006.
  7. ^ Peretz: No pilot ordered to fire at civilians - Yedioth Ahronoth. 31 July 2006
  8. ^ "Israel says its troops could stay in Lebanon for months", CNN, 2006-08-16.
  9. ^ "PM, Lieberman sign coalition deal", Ynetnews, October 23, 2006
  10. ^ What is left of Amir Peretz? - Haaretz Editorial. 27 October 2006
Political offices
Preceded by:
Shimon Peres		 Leader of the Labor Party
2005–present		 Succeeded by:
incumbent
Preceded by:
Shaul Mofaz		 Defense Minister of Israel
2006–present		 Succeeded by:
incumbent
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