ensuring Israeli military might and security, appointed several times to crucial roles such as Foreign minister and Defense minister.
During the 1950s, he reached a secret agreement with France to build a nuclear reactor at Dimona in the Negev desert. According to the US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, the nuclear power reactor can produce estimated 100 and 200 nuclear warheads and remains as the biggest and sole nuclear armed-power in the Middle East.
Peres dedicated the second half in pursuit of bringing peace to his country. Before taken up the post of the ninth president of Israel in 2007, he served twice as prime minister, first between 1984 and 1986 with Likud; then later again after the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
He stayed in power until 1996when he lost the election to Benjamin Netanyahu whom has been in premiership up to date.
In his later years, he became Israel's moderate face under the hardheaded leadership of Netanyahu. He insisted many times that peace between Israel and Palestine is around the corner and will not hesitate “to extend my life for a year or two” to promote that goal, told Peres in a 2013 interview.
He once spoke at the UN that “The time has come to comprehend that the real triumph is in the harvest of peace, not in the seeds of another war.”
However, he never had been fully entrusted by Israeli voters.
“At the ballot box they preferred a stern right winger in government,”concluded analyst Anshel Pfeffer. That is to say, today Peres’ death might lead