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Special Report
The Shimon Peres Palestinians Can’t Forget By Yousef Munayyer
ILIA YEFIMOVICH/GETTY IMAGES
time Peres, who died Sept. 28 at 93, put his signature on the Accords on the White House Lawn, he was 70 years old. The most significant parts of his biography, those in which he had the biggest impact on the world around him, are the parts most remembrances have chosen to deemphasize. Shimon Peres was a Forrest Gump–like figure in Israeli history. At almost every critical stage, he was involved in important policy decisions, and his actions had a longlasting impact on the course of the state. During the war in 1948, even at a young age, he played an important role in procuring the arms Israel would use in the process President Shimon Peres speaks at a press conference for foreign media on July 6, 2014 in Sderot, of depopulating much of the native populaIsrael, two days before Israel launched its deadly Operation Protective Edge against Gaza, killing tion of Palestine. In 1956, he worked with some 2,200 people, 67 percent of them civilians. Britain and France to launch a war on Egypt in defense of Europe’s dying colonial ambitions. Through his relationship with Paris, Peres was able to gain WHEN MAJOR figures die, the remembrances begin to pour in. French support for the development of Israel’s nuclear-weapons The narratives created about those who have gone are supprogram. That alone is likely the most significant achievement on posed to tell us a lot about them. But what we choose to rehis résumé. But since it was done behind Washington’s back, it member and how we choose to remember tell us a great deal hasn’t figured prominently in American remembrances. about us as well. By the 1970s, as defense minister, Peres had morphed from In the case of Nelson Mandela, the mainstream American reweapons procurer to weapons provider, helping to supply South membrance narrative was that of Mandela the nonviolent dealAfrica’s apartheid regime with not only conventional weapons but maker—a portrait that brushed aside Mandela the freedom fighter secretly agreeing to sell it nuclear weapons—at the very same who reserved the right to use violence against oppressors suptime the world was moving in the direction of an international arms ported by the United States and Britain. In the case of Muhammad boycott against Pretoria. During this period, Peres also oversaw Ali, the remembrance narrative leaned toward that of the aging the establishment of illegal settlements in the West Bank, settleOlympic flag-bearer, silenced by Parkinson’s, who was a symbol ments that would later be major geographic and political obstacles of tolerance—not the fiery, vocal champion of oppressed African to the two-state solution he later claimed he wanted to see. In Americans who denounced racism and American imperialism and those years, he was a supporter of the settlement enterprise and sacrificed the peak of his career by refusing to be drafted to fight called for permanent Israeli control of the West Bank. in Vietnam. We remember, in these figures, that which is easy for One of the most important impacts of Peres’ career, which too us, and we forget that which makes us uncomfortable. often is left out of the conversation, is how poor a politician he With the passing of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon was. The Polish-born Peres was seen by many Israelis as an Peres, a similar dynamic is at play. The remembrances focus on outsider who was not entirely trustworthy (perhaps because he the Peres of the Oslo Accords, the Nobel Laureate who battled did not serve in an army combat role), especially in comparison for an agreement despite the political costs in Israel. But by the with his political rival Yitzhak Rabin, who was born in Palestine and actively partook in the ethnic cleansing of some of its towns Yousef Munayyer is executive director of the US Campaign for Palesand villages. His various battles with Rabin often left their Labor tinian Rights, and a policy analyst with the Arab Center in Washington, DC. Copyright ©2016 The Nation. Distributed by Agence Global. Party divided, and on the three occasions when Peres led his 18
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016