Benjamin Ben-Eliezer

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer (2008)

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer ( Hebrew בנימין בן אליעזר; * February 12, 1936 in Basra , Iraq as Fuad Ben-Eliezer ; † August 28, 2016 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli professional soldier, most recently with the rank of Brigadier General (Tat-Aluf), and subsequently a politician.

Life

Benjamin Ben-Eliezer came from an Iraqi Jewish family . He came to the newly founded State of Israel with his family in 1949.

Career as an officer

Ben-Eliezer joined the Army (IDF) in 1954 and, after completing his military service, began a career as a career officer in 1958. He served in the Golani Brigade and graduated from IDF Command and Staff College and Israel National Defense College. During the Six Day War in 1967 he commanded the Sajeret Schaked elite unit . From 1970 to 1973 he was a member of the IDF military mission in Singapore ; in the 1973 Yom Kippur War he again commanded Israeli troops and was wounded in the process. In 1977, during the Lebanese Civil War, he was appointed the first commanding officer in southern Lebanon and acted as a liaison officer to the Christian Lebanese militias . From 1978 to 1981 he was the commander of the Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank , and in 1983/1984 he acted as government coordinator for the "civil" military administration in the occupied Palestinian territories .

Politician

When Aharon Abuchazira and other Mizrahim left the Ashkenazim- dominated National Religious Party and founded a new party, Tnu'at Masoret Jisra'el (Tami), in 1981 , Ben-Eliezer joined them. But before the parliamentary elections in 1984 he changed parties and joined the Yachad party, newly founded by Ezer Weizman . For Yachad, Ben-Eliezer was elected to the Knesset for the first time in the same year . A little later, Yachad merged with the HaMa'arach alliance . When the alliance fell apart, Ben-Eliezer stayed with the strongest party of the former Ma'arach, the Labor Party . As their deputy, he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense until 1992 and the Committee on Labor and Social Affairs until 1988. From 1992 until the Labor Party-led government was voted out of office in 1996, Ben-Eliezer was Minister for Housing, initially under Yitzchak Rabin and, after his assassination in 1995, under Shimon Peres . Rabin sent his confidante Ben-Eliezer, who spoke fluent Arabic, to Tunis in 1994 on a secret mission . There he was the first Israeli minister to negotiate with Yasser Arafat .

As Minister of Housing, he always promoted an expansive settlement policy, especially in the Jerusalem region . Subsequently, he was again a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense. In July 1999 he returned to government responsibility as Minister of Communications and Deputy Prime Minister under Ehud Barak , and in August 2000 he also took over the housing department again. During this time he was also responsible for drawing up a plan for the separation of the Palestinian territories.

After Barak was voted out of office and the government of national unity, including the Labor Party, led by Ariel Sharon, was formed in March 2001, Ben-Eliezer became Minister of Defense and thus assumed a key position. When Barak's resignation made it necessary for the party chairman to be elected in September 2001, Ben-Eliezer, who was considered a “ falcon ” within his own party , initially appeared to be narrowly inferior to the “dove” Avraham Burg ; However, by-elections as a result of irregularities then resulted in a majority vote for Ben-Eliezer, and in December 2001 he formally assumed the office of party chairman.

As Defense Minister under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he occasionally pleaded for diplomatic means to resolve the Middle East conflict, but essentially supported Sharon's internationally harshly criticized course towards the Palestinians. He met the resistance of his own party, which accused its ministers, above all Ben-Eliezer, of betraying the principles of the party and repeatedly called on them to leave the government. The final break with Sharon and the resignation of Ben-Eliezer and the rest of the Labor Party ministers from the government occurred in October 2002 due to serious differences over the 2003 budget, which on the one hand included drastic cuts and the like. a. planned in the social field, but on the other hand continued to provide high subsidies for the Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories, which the Labor Party rejected. In November 2002, Ben-Eliezer also lost the party chairmanship: with only about 37 percent of the votes, he was clearly defeated by his challenger Amram Mitzna in the election of the new party leadership .

After his party entered into an alliance with the left-wing Meimad party for the 2003 Knesset elections , Ben-Eliezer belonged to the Labor Meimad faction in the Knesset. In January 2005 he was appointed Minister of Infrastructure. Serious allegations were made against him in 2007. He is said to have committed or ordered atrocities against Egyptian prisoners of war during the Six Day War in 1967. As a result, he canceled a trip to Egypt for fear of being arrested. After the 2009 Knesset elections , he became Minister of Trade and Industry in Benjamin Netanyahu's 2nd cabinet . When his companion Ehud Barak left the Labor Party in 2011 and founded the Ha'Atzma'ut party , Ben-Eliezer gave up his ministerial office. In the 2013 Knesset elections , he was re-elected for the Labor Party, but resigned from his seat in December 2014 due to illness.

Ben-Eliezer last lived in Rishon LeZion . He was married with five children.

Fonts

• פואד: כנגד כל הסיכויים ( Fuʼad: Ke-neged kol ha-sikujim ). Jedi'ot Acharonot, Tel-Aviv 2005 (autobiography, Hebrew).

literature

• Benjamin Ben-Eliezer , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 22/2009 of May 26, 2009, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Binyamin Ben-Eliezer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Biography of the Israeli Foreign Ministry
• El Corresponsal de Medio Oriente y Africa (Spanish)
• "Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (1936-)" ( Memento from January 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Jafi.org.il (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Jonathan Lis: Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, 1936-2016: From Scared Iraqi Immigrant Boy to an Israeli Political Giant . In: Haaretz , August 28, 2016.
2. ↑ Sami Shalom Chetrit: Mizrahi Politics in Israel. Between integration and alternative . In: Journal of Palestine Studies , Vol. 29, (2000), No. 4, pp. 51-65.
3. ^ Peter Ezra Weinberger: Co-opting the PLO. A Critical Reconstruction of the Oslo Accords, 1993-1995 . Lexington Books, Lanham 2006, ISBN 0-7391-1017-9 , p. 108.
4. ↑ Witness incriminates Ben-Eieser. Israeli minister reportedly shot prisoners . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17./18. March 2007, p. 12.