Yitzhak Shamir
Yitzhak Shamir | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | October 15, 1915 |
| Title | 7th Prime Minister of Israel |
| Term | 1983-1984 and 1986-1992 |
| Predecessor | Menachem Begin (1st term) Shimon Peres (2nd term) |
| Successor | Shimon Peres (1st term) Yitzhak Rabin (2nd term) |
| Political party | Likud |
| Spouse | Shulamit Shamir |
(Hebrew יִצְחָק שָׁמִיר) (born October 15, 1915) was Prime Minister of Israel from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992. He was born in Różana, Poland (now Ruzhany, Belarus), under the name of Icchak Jaziernicki.
Shamir moved to Warsaw where he graduated from the law faculty of the Warsaw University. He also joined the Betar organization.
In the British Mandate of Palestine
In 1935 he came to the British Mandate of Palestine and in the same year changed his family name to Shamir. Shamir joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi, one of the underground Jewish organizations directed against the British control of Mandate Palestine. When the Irgun split in 1940, Shamir sided with the most militant faction, headed by Avraham Stern. The group offered to open up a military front against the British in the Middle East in return for the expulsion of the Jewish population of Europe to Palestine (see Lehi, Revisionist Zionism; Heller, 1995, pp. 85-86).
In 1941 Shamir was imprisoned by British authorities. After Stern was killed by the British in 1942, Shamir escaped from the detention camp and became one of the three leaders of the group in 1943, reforming it as "Lehi". During his tenure, the Lehi was responsible for the 1944 assassination of Britain's minister of state for the Middle East, Lord Moyne; an assassination attempt against Harold MacMichael, the High Commissioner of the British Mandate of Palestine in the same year (Kushner, 2002, p. 348), and in 1948 the assassination of the United Nations representative in the Middle East, Count Folke Bernadotte who, although he had secured the release of 21,000 prisoners from German camps during World War II, was seen by Shamir and his collaborators as an anti-Zionist and "an obvious agent of the British enemy" (Gazi, 2002, p. 32). wrg
In Israel
After the successful battle for independence, Shamir joined the secret intelligence service (Mossad) (1955-1965). In 1969 joined the Herut party headed by Menachem Begin and was first elected to the Knesset in 1973 as a member of the Likud (initially a coalition of the Herut and several smaller parties which eventually became an unitary party). He became chairman of the Knesset in 1977 and foreign minister in 1980, before succeeding Begin as prime minister in 1983.
Prime minister
Although Shamir had a reputation as a Likud hard-liner, in 1977 he presided at the visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the peace talks; in 1981 and 1982 he guided negotiations with Egypt to normalize relations after the treaty and directed negotiations which led to the 1983 agreement with Lebanon (never ratified by the Lebanese government).
His failure to stabilize Israel's inflationary economy led to an indecisive election in 1984, after which a coalition was formed between his Likud Party and the Labor Party, led by Shimon Peres. Peres agreed to be prime minister until September 1986, when Shamir took over.
As he prepared to reclaim the office of prime minister, which he had held previously from October 1983 to September 1984, Shamir's hard-line image appeared to moderate. Reelected in 1988, Shamir and Peres formed a new coalition government until 1990, when the Labor party left the government, leaving Shamir with a narrow coalition.
In 1991 the Shamir government took part in the Madrid peace talks and ordered the rescue of thousands of Ethiopian Jews, the Operation Solomon. The Shamir government also decided not to retaliate after the unprovoked Iraqi Scud missile volleys (many of which struck Israeli population centers) during the First Gulf War. The United States urged restraint, saying Israeli attacks would jeopardize the delicate Arab-Western coalition assembled against Iraq. Although long a hard-liner, Shamir left office in 1992, after his government fell amid charges that Likud—by taking part in the Madrid Peace Conference—had effectively agreed to enter negotiations over Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza.
Electoral defeat and retirement
Shamir was defeated by Yitzhak Rabin in the Israeli elections of 1992. Shamir stepped down from Likud leadership in March, 1993. For some time, he was a critic of his Likud successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, as being too indecisive in dealing with the Arabs. Later he disappeared from Israel's public agenda.
Shamir's name re-emerged in the Israeli news in 2004 when his family's request for special state funding for his hospitalization in a nursing home was turned down. Treasury officials were concerned of a precedent that would carry too heavy consequences for Israel's weak economy. Also, they suggested that his state pension should be used for his treatment.
References
- Gazi, Mordechai (2002). Israeli Diplomacy & the Middle East Peace Process. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714652334
- Heller, Joseph (1995). The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics, and Terror, 1940-1949. Frank Cass Publishers. ISBN 0714645583
- Kushner, Harvey W. (2002). Encyclopedia of Terrorism. Sage Publications. ISBN 0761924086