Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres; Hebrew: שמעון פרס; born Szymon Perski; 2 August 1923) is a Polish-born Israeli statesman. He was the ninth President of Israel from 2007 to 2014. Peres served twice as the Prime Minister of Israel and twice as Interim Prime Minister, and he was a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and, except for a three-month-long hiatus in early 2006, served continuously until 2007,...
NationalityIsraeli
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth2 August 1923
CountryIsrael
We understand perfectly well that without an inflow of people and goods within Gaza or outside Gaza, Gaza will not be able to exist,
Israel has its attractions. It's the most dramatic country in the world. Everybody's engaged. Everybody argues. When I leave Israel, I get a little bit bored, you know?
Saddam Hussein is one of the greatest killers -- and a smart one -- around us. He endangers his own people. He endangers his neighbors. And he will not stop being a danger because this is his nature, and this is his position,
Contrary to his father, he speaks foreign languages, ... He was educated abroad. He is aware that the world has changed.
We don't want to occupy them or reoccupy them, and as soon as it is possible we shall be more than happy to leave them, provided that security can be assured,
We must pay attention to the situation and the mood of the Palestinian people in the territories. We do not want them to suffer, we do not want them to pay a price for terror and violence,
That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.
Today, the people are governing the governments. And when they begin to talk to each other, they are surprised, they can be friends. Why should we hate each other?
Nobody knows, but I would say a matter of years.
Look, we have existed for 4,000 years - 2,000 years in diaspora, in exile. Nobody in the Middle East speaks their original language but Israel. When we started 64 years ago, we were 650,000 people. So, you know, we are maybe swimming a little bit against the stream, but we continue to swim.
My goal is to make peace and it doesn't matter with which party.
There was one occasion when I was very young - eight years or seven years old - that Jewish businessmen went through the forest, and they were assassinated. And that was for the first time I saw in our paper where there were assassinations in our place.
Look, I worked with American Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, all of them, and each of them has shown a deep and profound friendship to Israel, you know? I can't remember anybody who was in that sense negative as far as Israel is concerned.
When I look at the record of President Obama concerning the major issue security I think it's a highly satisfactory record from Israeli point of view.