Amir Peretz

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Amir Peretz, 2019

Amir Peretz ( Hebrew עמיר פרץ; Born March 9, 1952 in Boujad , Morocco ) is an Israeli politician and trade unionist. From 2005 to 2007 he was and since July 2019 he has been chairman of the social democratic party Avoda (Labor Party).

From December 1995 to the end of 2005 he was chairman of the Israeli trade union confederation Histadrut , from May 2006 to June 2007 he was Israel's Defense Minister and from March 2013 to November 2014 he was Israel's Minister of the Environment . He has been Minister of Economic Affairs since May 2020.

Life

Early years

Born in Morocco in 1952, he emigrated to Israel with his parents at the age of four. There the family initially lived in a transit camp, today's city of Sderot . Peretz's father, the former chairman of the Jewish community in Morocco, found work in a factory and his mother worked in a laundry. When he was 14, Peretz was handing out leaflets about social justice . He adored Che Guevara . At 18 he joined the army.

In 1973 Peretz was seriously wounded in the leg in the Yom Kippur War . His last rank with the paratroopers was captain. In the two years of his recovery, Peretz founded a farm near Sderot and specialized in the cultivation of rose leeks and garlic . Here he met his wife Ahlama, with whom he has four children.

Political career

In 1983 he won the mayoral election of Sderot for the Labor Party, ending a long period in which the city was ruled by Likud and the National Religious Party (Mafdal). In 1988 he became a member of the Knesset and in 1995 chairman of the Histadrut trade union confederation.

In 1999, Amir Peretz left the Labor Party and founded the trade union party Am Echad (“One Nation”), which won two seats in the Knesset in 1999 and three in 2003. In the summer of 2004, Am Echad merged with the Labor Party.

In a membership vote on November 9, 2005 for the office of chairman of the Labor Party, Peretz won with 42.35% against incumbent Shimon Peres (39.96%) and Benjamin Ben Eliezer (16.8%). During the election campaign, he announced a more left - wing policy, campaigned for fair wages, more state influence over the economy and social equality, and promised to work towards an early end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories . Commentators such as Uri Avnery and Natan Sznaider saw Peretz's election as an opportunity for political and social upheaval. After his election as head of the Labor Party, Peretz resigned his position as chairman of the Histadrut trade union federation (his successor was Ofer Eini ). He terminated the ruling coalition with the Likud party and early Knesset elections were held in March 2006. The Labor Party did not succeed in gaining seats. Nevertheless, Peretz set clear conditions for his party's participation in a coalition: an increase in the statutory minimum wage, reduction in the number of employees in temporary employment agencies, a health reform and a statutory pension scheme for every citizen. In fact, the Labor Party became part of the new government coalition led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert . However, Peretz did not take over a social policy ministry, but the defense department.

After the war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006, which was disappointing from an Israeli point of view , Peretz increasingly lost its popularity, which severely restricted his political room for maneuver. Peretz also did not object to the fact that at the end of October 2006 Olmert accepted the hardliner Avigdor Lieberman and with him the party Jisra'el Beitenu into government.

In April 2007, the Israeli government set up a committee of inquiry into the Lebanon war published its preliminary report. Not only the Prime Minister Olmert, but also the Minister of Defense were made serious accusations.

Peretz had become politically intolerable. First of all, the party members voted him out at the end of May 2007 as Awoda chief: behind Ehud Barak and Ami Ajalon he only came in third place. And Barak, who triumphed over Ajalon in the runoff election on June 12, 2007, then claimed Peretz's defense ministry as the successor to Peretz in the office of party leader. The Knesset confirmed this change on June 18, 2007.

After Barak left the Labor Party in January 2011, Peretz ran again for chairmanship. The party members did not elect him, but the former journalist Shelly Yachimovich as chairman. At the beginning of December 2012, Peretz suddenly switched from the Labor Party to the Ha-Tnu'a , which was newly founded by Zipi Livni and can be assigned to the "political center" . From March 2013 he was Environment Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu III's cabinet . He left the government in November 2014 in protest against the proposed budget, which in his view would not be able to "resolve Israel's economic inequality".

After the Ha-Tnu'a teamed up with the Avoda to form the Zionist Union for the 2015 Knesset election , Peretz returned to the Labor Party in September 2015.

At the beginning of July 2019, Peretz was elected chairman of the Labor Party for the second time. He won with 47% against Stav Shaffir (26.9%) and Itzik Shmuli (26.3%).

From May 17, 2020 he will be Minister of Economic Affairs in the Benjamin Netanyahu V cabinet .

Initiator of the Iron Dome missile protection shield

Peretz is considered to be the pioneer of the Iron Dome missile protection shield , which was initially considered incompatible with Israel's military strategy and was subject to severe criticism. However, the missile protection shield implemented by Peretz during his tenure as Minister of Defense prevented 300 Hamas rockets from bombarding inhabited areas as part of Operation Cloud Pillar .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peretz is not Peres , Uri Avnery in the Junge Welt of November 12, 2005, to be read on the website of the Peace Research Working Group
  2. ↑ Dawn over Israel? , Natan Sznaider in the NZZ on December 9, 2005
  3. ↑ Ofer Eini - bearers of hope and savior?  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Website of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Israel , December 5, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.boell.org.il  
  4. ^ HaGalil : Coalition negotiations: first talks initiated
  5. ↑ Did Israel vote out of the boom? , Die Welt Online, April 16, 2006
  6. ↑ haGalil : Commentary on the swearing-in of the new government: "Peace, peace and no peace"
  7. ↑ What is left of Amir Peretz? In: Ha'aretz , October 27, 2006.
  8. ↑ Violent allegations against Olmert - "Serious failure". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung Online, April 30, 2007
  9. ↑ Israel's Labor Party is looking for a new boss. In: Die Welt Online, May 30, 2007
  10. ^ Barak new Minister of Defense. In: haGalil Online, June 19, 2007
  11. ^ Jachimowitsch new Avoda boss , israelnetz.com, September 22, 2011
  12. ↑ from TLV-01: Unheard-of dramas in Israel's election campaign. In: haGalil. December 6, 2012, accessed on July 2, 2019 (German).
  13. ^ TOI staff, Lazar Berman: Minister quits over budget, says Israel needs alternative to Netanyahu. Retrieved July 2, 2019 (American English).
  14. ↑ Peretz returns to Labor Party - Israel News - Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 2, 2019 .
  15. ↑ Raoul Wootliff: Ailing Labor elects past chairman Amir Peretz to lead it through next election. Retrieved July 2, 2019 (American English).
  16. ↑ Iron Dome, the most modern rocket umbrella in the world in welt.de on November 19, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Peretz, Amir
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli politician and trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH March 9, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Boujad , Morocco