Amir Peretz

Not to be confused withAmir Perets.

Amir Peretz
עמיר פרץ‎
Peretz in 2007
Ministerial roles
2006–2007	Minister of Defence
2006–2007	Deputy Prime Minister
2013–2014	Minister of Environmental Protection
2020–2021	Minister of Economy
Faction represented in theKnesset
1988–1992	Alignment
1992–1999	Labor
1999–2004	One Nation
2004–2012	Labor
2013–2015	Hatnuah
2015–2019	Zionist Union
2019–2021	Labor
Other roles
2005–2006	Leader of the Opposition
2005–2007	Leader of the Labor Party
2019–2021	Leader of the Labor Party
Personal details
Born	(1952-03-09)9 March 1952 Boujad,Morocco

Amir Peretz(Hebrew:עמיר פרץ;born 9 March 1952) is an Israeli politician who served as a member of theKnessetfor theLabor Party.A Knesset member almost continuously from 1988 to 2021, he has served asMinister of Defence,Minister of Economy,andMinister of Environmental Protection,as well as heading theHistadruttrade union federation between 1995 and 2006.

After five years as mayor ofSderot,Peretz first became an MK for the Labor-dominatedAlignmentin 1988. In 1999 he left Labor to establish his own party,One Nation,which he led until merging it back into Labor in 2004. The following year he defeatedShimon Peresin a Labor leadership election and becameLeader of the Opposition.Following the2006 electionsLabor joined theKadima-led coalition government, with Peretz appointed Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister. His subsequent tenure as Defense Minister included the2006 Lebanon Warand approval of theIron Domedefence system in early 2007. Midway through 2007 Peretz was defeated byEhud Barakin another Labor leadership election and resigned from the cabinet.

In December 2012, he resigned from the Knesset after leaving Labor to join the newHatnuahparty, but soon returned to the legislature after being re-elected in theJanuary 2013 elections.Following the elections, Hatnuah joined the coalition government and Peretz was appointed Minister of Environmental Protection. However, he resigned the following year due to his opposition to the government budget. Shortly after the2015 elections,which Labor and Hatnuah had contested together as theZionist Union,Peretz rejoined the Labor Party. In 2019 he was elected leader of the party for a second time.He was succeeded byMerav Michaelion 24 January 2021.

In December 2020, Peretz announced he was running forPresident of Israel.He left the Knesset on 29 January 2021 and was replaced byIlan Gilon,a member ofMeretz.

Early life

Armand Peretz was born inBoujad,Moroccoto aSephardic Jewishfamily during the French protectorate. His father David was head of the Jewish community in Boujad. The familyemigrated to Israelwhen Morocco won independence in 1956. They were settled in the thendevelopment townofSderot,Israel,where Peretz grew up until the age of 18. He went to high school in a nearbykibbutz.

Peretz served his compulsory military service in the IDF Artillery wing between 1970 and 1972, and was selected as an officer in theIsrael Defense Forcesas the brigadeordnanceofficer of the 202ndparatroopersbrigadeand reached the rank ofcaptain.On 22 April 1974, Peretz was badly wounded in an accident at theMitla Pass.He spent a year in the hospital recuperating. After leaving the hospital, he bought a farm in the village ofNir Akiva.Still in awheelchair,he began growing vegetables and flowers for export. During this period he met his wife Ahlama and they married. They have four children.

Political career

Mayor of Sderot

In 1983 Peretz ran for the office of mayor ofSderot,as candidate of the Israel Labor Party. He won, ending a long period of dominance of the town's politics by the right-wingLikudparty and theNational Religious Party.It was the first in a series of local councils that passed back to Labor control in the late 1980s. As mayor, he emphasised education and worked to improve previously fractious relations with the kibbutzim in the area.

Histadrut and 'One Nation'

In 1988 he was elected a member of theKnesset.In 1994, after failing in a previous bid forHistadrutleadership, Peretz joined forces withHaim Ramonto contest control of the then powerful trade union federation. They ran on an independent list against the favoured candidate of then Labor leaderYitzhak Rabin.They won, and Peretz became Ramon's deputy at the Histadrut, isolating him within the Labor Party. He became chairman of the 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. Sometimes the pretext for declaring a general strike would be an inopportune statement by the finance minister, as had been the case withYa'akov Ne'emanin 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 ofBenjamin Netanyahuas 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".

In 1999 Peretz resigned from the Labor Party to form his own party,One Nation.The party won two seats in theKnessetin the1999 elections,and three in2003.As Labor's fortunes changed with theLikud Partyin government, and Israel's social programmes being dismantled by the market-oriented reforms of finance ministerBenjamin 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 Labor from oblivion". After protracted negotiations with then-Labor Party leaderShimon Peresand other party leaders, One Nation merged with Labor in the summer of 2004.

Labor Party leadership

Main article:2005 Israeli Labor Party leadership election

After the merger, Peretz ran for the leadership of the Labor Party on a platform of ending the coalition with Likud, led by Prime MinisterAriel Sharon,and reasserting Labor's traditional socialist economic policies. Peretz narrowly defeated Peres, the incumbent leader, in the election on 9 November 2005.

Peretz at aLabor Partyrally, April 2008

Peretz won 42% of the vote compared to 40% for Peres and 17% for former defence minister and party leaderBinyamin Ben-Eliezer.After winning this election, Peretz resigned from his Histadrut post to focus on winning the election for prime minister. The party withdrew its support for the government on 11 November and all Labor Party cabinet ministers resigned. This action resulted in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calling a new election for 28 March 2006. Shortly thereafter, Sharon and much of his Cabinet left Likud to form a new party,Kadima. During his period as Labor Party leader, Peretz nominated anArab Muslim Israeli,Raleb Majadele,to be Minister of Culture, Science and Sports. His nomination was a breakthrough in the relationship between the Arab-Israeli population and the Israeli government. This nomination was criticised by the right-wing party ofYisrael Beiteinuheaded byAvigdor Lieberman.

Prior to his entry into government Peretz promised that he would not enter government withAvigdor Liberman'sIsrael Beytenuparty, which has a platform of removing Arabs fromIsraelby redrawing Israels boundaries, however his party did not protest when on 23 October 2006, Liberman signed a coalition agreement withKadima,making them a junior coalition partner,leading the Israeli newspaperHaaretzto say that "Amir Peretz has let his voters down in every possible way."

Peretz campaign billboard, Tel Aviv, January 2006. "Ki Higía' Haz'mán" – "Because The Time Has Come"

Minister of Defense

Peretz as Minister of Defense (left:Robert Gates)

Peretz was criticised for abandoning the social agenda that headlined his campaign and accepting the Defense portfolio because of its prestige, rather than the Finance portfolio that better corresponded with the Labor Party social agenda. His performance as a Minister of Defense during theSecond Lebanon Warwas deemed disappointing, which led to early elections for the Labor Party leadership. He was defeated by former Labor Party chairman and former Prime MinisterEhud Barakand resigned from his post.

During his term as Defense Minister, the Second Lebanon warerupted following the capture of two Israelisoldiers by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah from Israel's northern border. Peretz and Olmert launched a campaign against Hezbollah. For 33 days the attacks were carried out via air and land on military and civilian targets. In the last 48 hours of the war, Peretz pushed for a massive ground operation. Land troops were flown by helicopters to seize the ground between the Israeli-Lebanese border and the riverLitani.In this operation, at least 33 Israeli soldiers were killed, and much anger was created amongst the Israeli public. The committee that was established by the government to investigate the war, theWinograd Committee,found that the decision to launch this operation was rational and justifiable under the current circumstances. After losing the internal elections in the Labor party to Ehud Barak, Peretz quit the defence ministry in June 2007.

Hatnuah

Peretz remained in the Knesset after losing his leadership role in the Labor Party and was re-elected in 2009. He opposed Ehud Barak's decision to enter a coalition government headed by Likud leaderBenjamin Netanyahu.In December 2012, he left the Labor Party to joinTzipi Livni's newHatnuahparty. As a result, he resigned from the Knesset, and was replaced byYoram Marciano.

He was re-elected to the Knesset on the Hatnuah list in the2013 elections,and was appointedMinister of Environmental Protection.However, he resigned from the post on 9 November 2014 due to his opposition to the government's budget plans.

After being re-elected again in2015on theZionist Unionlist (an alliance of Hatnuah and the Labor Party), Peretz defected from Hatnuah back to the Labor Party in September 2015,

Minister of the Economy

Amir Peretz campaigning, July 2019

Peretz was re-elected as Labor party leader in the2019 Israeli Labor Party leadership election.In the lead up to theSeptember general elections,Peretz promised to not join a Netanyahu-led government, and in a stunt shaved off his iconic mustache, stating “I decided to remove my mustache so that all of Israel will understand exactly what I’m saying and will be able to read my lips — I won’t sit with Bibi.”

On 22 April 2020, following the2020 Israeli legislative election,Labor announced that it will join theNetanyahu-Gantz coalition,with Peretz serving as Minister of the Economy.As economic minister, Peretz will coordinate with Blue and White on parliamentary matters and policy issues.Despite agreeing to join the new government, Peretz also stated that he and other Labor MKs will still vote against a proposed West Bank annexation plan.On 26 April 2020, 64.2% of the Labor Party's 3,840 central committee members approved of Peretz's decision to join the new government.He was sworn in to this position of 17 May 2020.

Views and opinions

Social matters

During his 2006 campaign Peretz declared that "within two years of taking office I will have eradicated child poverty in Israel".Notwithstanding, he has 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 to Brazilian presidentLula.

Palestinians and the Arab World

As party politician

In matters concerning relations with thePalestiniansand theArabworld, candidate Peretz was seen in 2005 as holding dovish positions.He was one of the early leaders of thePeace Nowmovement.He was also, in the 1980s, a member of a group of eight Labor party Knesset members, dubbed "the Eight" and led byYossi Beilin,who tried to set a liberal agenda for the party in matters concerning the peace process with the Palestinians. Peretz was said to connect the peace process and internal Israeli social issues. He claimed to believe that the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians has also been a hindrance to the solution of some of Israel's most pressing social ills, such as rising inequality, claiming that he saw the resources allotted to the settlements in theWest Bankas having diverted funds that could have helped to solve these problems. He had described the conflict as having mutated Israeli politics, so that the traditional left-right distinctions do 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 Labor party had ironically become elitist. Peretz claimed that this is why he saw an intrinsic connection between a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the resolving of Israel's internal social tensions.In 2008 Peretz also backed direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian movementHamas.

As defense minister

Following Peretz's entry into government, however, perceptions of his views towards Palestinians changed, especially as the Defense Minister who led the military in theconflict in Lebanonand with the Hamas group in andaround the Gaza Strip.The army's actions under Peretz in Lebanon were described aswar crimesbyAmnesty InternationalandHuman Rights Watch.While Peretz has not repudiated his past views he has been described by ArabMKIbrahim Sarsuras a "child murderer" in the aftermath of the2006 Qana airstrike,whileAhmad Tibisaid to Peretz "you are a man of war, you are no longer a man of peace."

Amir Peretz was hailed duringOperation Pillar of Defensein November 2012 as a defence visionary for having had the foresight while in office back in 2006–2007 to face down myriad sceptics and push for the development ofIron Dome,Israel's unique anti-rocket interceptor system.

External links

• Amir Peretzon the Knesset website
• "Interview with Amir Peretz, leader of the Histadrut and candidate for Head of the Israel Labour Party".National Labor Committee for Israel. June 2005. Archived fromthe originalon 17 June 2006.
• Robin Peters (21 November 2005)."Peretz victory changes political mood".socialistworld.net. Archived fromthe originalon 27 September 2007.
• "Who is Amir Peretz?".Ynetnews.11 November 2005.
• "Profile:Amir Peretz".BBC News.13 November 2005.
• "Defense Minister of Israel – Amir Peretz".Ynetnews.2 August 2006.