The former Israeli leader suffered a major stroke earlier this month. His condition deteriorated significantly yesterday.
President Obama is expected to attend the funeral, according to a White House spokesman. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, her husband and former president Bill Clinton, and Britain’s Prince Charles are also expected to attend.
Obama said Americans owed Peres a debt of gratitude for his efforts to strengthen ties, stretching back to his work with the administration of John Kennedy. “No one did more over so many years as Shimon Peres to build the alliance between our two countries,” he said.
Over a seven decade career, Peres served as prime minister, president and Labor Party chief. He was the last surviving member of a group of leaders who witnessed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, including David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir and Ariel Sharon, among others.
At the height of his career, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for negotiating the Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that became known as the Oslo Accords. He shared it with Yitzhak Rabin, a rival Labor leader, and Yasser Arafat, the longtime Palestine Liberation Organization chief.
The accords outlined steps toward a two-state solution to the decades long Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a vision that still has NOT been realized.
In 2012, Obama presented Peres, then 88-years old, and Israel’s president, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in America…
Initially, Peres supported Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza – land captured during the 1967 Middle East war. But, he focused his later years on promoting a peaceful resolution with the Palestinians based on separate states.
A little over a year ago, Shimon Peres gave a marvelous TED Talk that I’ve taken the liberty of including with this posting (well-worth! 20 minutes of your time)…
Lobster on the Prairie 