Review 22.8
6-26 June 1997

Shimon Peres speaks English powerfully. It's hard to believe it's not his first language, nor his second - probably his fourth. It's Dostoevsky does Tel Aviv. Perhaps it's that deep intonation, that heavily accented yet almost Shakespearean grasp of the language. Or perhaps it's that curious and powerful symmetry created when those who are so responsible for the broad sweep of history can also afford the luxury of reflecting on its passages and outcomes. "Well, I said to Ben Gurion ... Charles De Gaulle was not pleased ... Ronald Reagan smiled ... Golda Meir was not happy ... Kissinger pondered ... Bruno Kreisky gestured ... Mitterrand interrupted me..."

I wonder, sitting before Shimon Peres's appropriately imposing desk, whether the makers of history, regardless of their virtues, will always have a certain grandness in their manner. Is history their cloak? In the same way that the university professor dons a mortar board and tasselled robe, do the figures of history sit and recount their role, their acquaintances, their exploits? The fantasy is soon shattered. "Why are you asking all these questions about the past?" Peres snaps, irritably. "I am not interested in history. I am not interested in the past. The past cannot be changed; what is done is done; I am only interested in the future."

"But don't you ponder the past?" I ask. "Reflect in hindsight? Where were the mistakes made, what are the regrets?"

He scowls. "OK; yes, I have so many regrets. But you know what, I am lazy to single them out. I don't want to, why should I? First of all, believe me, I am totally uninterested in the past. If you wouldn't ask me I wouldn't talk about it. The past bores me. Listen, it bores me for two reasons; it never repeats itself and secondly it is unchangeable. So why should I concern myself with it? Only if you want to write fiction is there a sense in returning to the past".

But whether he likes it or not Shimon Peres is a figure of history. The Nobel Prize winner who became Director General of the Israeli Defence Ministry while still only in his twenties, who led operations to smuggle weapons from around the world to Israel in 1948, established Israel's hi-tech industry years before others understood its significance, and who, against strong opposition, was the architect of Israel's nuclear capability - the single most important factor in ensuring its security and survival today. It was Peres who conceived and masterminded the Entebbe rescue, the rebuilding of the army after the 1973 Yom Kippur war debacle, who forged the vital strategic relationship with France in the 1960's, and who created the infrastructure of Israel's modern military/industrial complex.

A figure of history, but not a captive of the past. Struggling to forge his vision of Israel, he risked all to create a homeland and then together with his former colleague Yitzhak Rabin risked all of that again for peace. And now, having forged that peace he canvasses a vision of Israel's place in a new - some say utopian - Middle East.

But unrewarding the path of the visionary can be, and Peres has suffered more opprobrium than most in the bitter and cut-throat world of Israeli domestic politics. Feted abroad, he is often distrusted at home. "What are you interviewing him for, he's a loser, he'd sell his grandmother to the Arabs", advises the taxi driver who delivers me to Peres's Tel Aviv office. It's a common theme; the inveterate intriguer; the hatchet man; the dreamer who mistakes a wish list with reality - contradictory characteristics of a complex man. Although twice Prime Minister, Peres has had many devotees but never the popular adulation or trust to win a national poll. His election loss last year to the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu was the final humiliating defeat, made more painful by the fact that it was also Peres who in 1977 lost the general election to the Likud's Menachem Begin - for the first time in the history of both the party and the country.

So how does he cope with the criticism, the constant public attacks and denigration?

"Yes it is there, but I deserved it. I was never on the easy side of things. When you challenge things there is always opposition. I am not concerned if people have complaints or criticisms of me. If I listened to all the advisers I have had in my life I would be like them, and I don't want that. Who remembers weather forecasts in history? What does it matter, the criticism? Neither praise, nor criticism.

"All the things I did in my life started with opposition. I have had to battle against opposition. And many people prefer to remember the battles rather than look ahead. What remains are results and leaders should be judged on their records not on the rumours...."

Perhaps it is not the best time to press him on his place in history. Only the day before Peres had been unceremoniously dumped from the Labour Party leadership, to which he had dedicated the best part of his life.

Although Peres had controlled the Labour Party machine for the last two decades, newcomer Ehud Barak trounced him at the party's national convention, putting an end to his hopes of election as Party President. "I don't need the President title. It wasn't my initiative. Friends came up with the idea and worked for it and I couldn't let them down. I couldn't tell them that they toiled for nothing," Peres told the press after the defeat was announced.

"Don't worry, he's going nowhere", a Labour Party insider assures me the next day.

"Shimon Peres is a wily old fox. We haven't seen the last of him yet." There are rumours swirling around Labour Party headquarters. Peres will break and join the Likud, work within the Labour Party via proxies like loyal backer Chaim Ramon to destabilise the Barak camp or worse still, establish his own party. His own party! At 73 years of age, after a life dedicated to Labour, would he do it? Recalling Peres's deep admiration for Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion I remind Peres how Ben Gurion seceded from Labour (with Peres in tow) to form the Rafi faction, at the youthful age of 79. He grins at me. "I'm still healthy," he smiles, bangs his chest and delights in toying with me as I enter into linguistic contortions, repeatedly rephrasing the question whilst he refuses to answer.

Others are equally wary. Knesset member and Peres supporter Dalia Itzik warns that after Peres's humiliating rout he is now free of any remaining constraints binding him to the party. "Peres did not say the last word. Not everything has been heard from him yet. Things will happen," she insists ominously.

But still Peres refuses to be pinned down. At a press conference after the vote he leaves the door open; there are other issues which trouble him, there is so much more to be done. "The appointment was not important to me. All I am concerned about is that time is running out fast for the peace process. We must save it for future generations. That is all that motivates me now and I will work relentlessly to save the peace process for my grandchildren and for all children. For that I need no title, no licence, no permission from anyone. I am a free man."

It's those last five words which leave Labour apparatchiks tearing their hair out in anticipation. "A free man! Free to do what!" an agitated Labour organiser almost screams at me during the party convention. I shrug and he walks off to accost someone else for an answer that no one, perhaps not even Peres, can give him yet.

The peace process. It preoccupies his mind; where it is going, what will happen next, how to save it from the ravages of the new Likud government?

Peres' eyes light up when we reach the topic. In fact he beats me to the question. "If you want to tie up my life with an historic moment - although history doesn't stop neither at a single night nor at a single day - but if you want to call a night an historic night then that was the night we signed Oslo, that was an historic night. My proudest moment in my life was Oslo."

And yet the Oslo peace process has hit the skids. Like a wayward child who has lost a parent, it is careering far from its intended path. With one father dead, and its mother on the side bench, its uncle Arafat is lashing out, first trying discipline, then excessive violence to bring a confused child to heel.

But aren't you disappointed with the way Yasser Arafat has violated Oslo over the last year? I ask Peres. "I amnever disappointed about others, I cannot replace them; but I am disappointed with our government," he says.

"Let me tell you something. Many Israelis say how can you trust the Palestinians? But look at South Africa. Ten years ago nobody believed that it was a solvable situation. It was one of the most complicated situations in the world. The blacks say how can we trust the whites; the whites say how can we trust the blacks. Now look what happened. "But the most amazing story, unmatched and unprecedented in history, is that a black president - Nelson Mandela - will bring to court hundreds of people who have assassinated innocent black people in cold blood and they tell their story in full daylight and they are being forgiven. Tell me any other precedent in history. Look, maybe in each of us there is a Nelson Mandela... I'm looking for the Nelson Mandelas".

Yet while Peres is searching for the Nelson Mandelas the front page headline of the morning's Jerusalem Post carries an ominous declaration from influential US Ambassador Martin Indyk. "Oslo has broken down", the report claims, outlining how the 1993 peace deal reached in Oslo between the PLO and Israel's former government has foundered. "The core bargain of Oslo has broken down - Israel was promised security and the Palestinians were promised self government" says Indyk. Neither has completely evolved. But Peres - grand architect of the secret back channel negotiations with the Palestinians that led to the historic breakthrough and declaration of principles in the Norwegian capital of Oslo - does not accept the ambassadors pessimism.

"Oslo can never die because the Palestinians are free and freedom is never dead. We have a peace agreement with Jordan. The process is now dying but the achievements are permanent and I don't see that anybody is going to return to Gaza or Nablus, this is finished. And also the hope for peace, the need for peace, cannot die".

" But you know, the biggest catastrophe for Israel is the lack of peace. If you don't have peace you have conflict. If you don't have a positive development you have a negative development. It is not necessarily war. It is enough to have isolation, boycotts, terror and ongoing threats."

It is not only the peace process, the constant break down into open hostilities and violence with the Palestinians that Peres fears. There are new existential threats. "I am very concerned that in fact we are going from a world of enemies to a world of dangers. Iran is the greatest danger to Israel. This is the greatest existential threat that Israel faces today", he leans forward and explains gravely. "They have the most evil movement. To put a price of $2.5 million on the head of a man, the author Salman Rushdie - it is evil. And what they tried to do to Salman Rushdie they are trying to do to us. There were evil movements in history, but never with this combination of nuclear and chemical weapons and long range missiles with which to deliver them. They are producing holy terror which is another estimation of war and their ambition is not to export an idea - they seek the lands of others...... It is a mistake that some of the European countries, and even Australia, continue to retain such close relations with them".

He was born Persky, not Peres, (Hebrew for an eagle), in a little Jewish shtetl or rural village in what was then Poland but is now Belarus. In 1933, at the age of 10 he travelled to Palestine with his family and survived the Holocaust. He was at one time a shepherd on Kibbutz Geva where he lived and whilst at Agricultural College came under the influence of legendary Israeli Labour ideologue Berl Katznelson. "Katznelson left an indelible impression on many of us", Peres once wrote. "He implanted in us a negative attitude toward the Communist revolution and Marxist dialectic, an attitude more interested in the values of the human race."

But if Peres is the idealistic dreamer he can also be the ruthless realist. Noticed early for his leadership skills, Peres became a loyal and close ally to David Ben Gurion. By the 1970s with Ben Gurion's support, but against the opposition of many within the Labour Party, including Golda Meir, he successfully established Israel's nuclear weapons project at Dimona. Reportedly furious at the theft of its secrets by Mordechai Vanunu and their sale to the London Times in 1986, it was Peres together with then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who ordered the Israeli security service to locate Vanunu and bring him back to Israel to stand trial. Ten years later has he changed his mind about Vanunu who still remains in an Israeli prison? "I don't have respect for traitors; nor for a lot of newspapers", says Peres.

When terrorists hijacked an Air France jet laden with Israeli nationals and flew it to Entebbe airport in 1976 the Labour government, including then PM Yitzhak Rabin prepared themselves to negotiate with the terrorists. Again it was Peres who opposed the party leadership, forcing them to eventually support a military rescue plan. "I pushed for the military option. I was tremendously relieved when the news came through of the operation's success, not only because of the success, but I knew if it had gone wrong, if anything should have happened I would have been held personally responsible. I would have been the one they pointed the finger at. It was a very complicated operation and there were many who were against it". Ironically, the Israeli commando team who performed the daring rescue operation suffered only one fatal casualty, their commander Jonathan Netanyahu - the elder brother of Israel's current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has achieved more than most could aspire to, but lately not all has gone well for Peres. His efforts to sell arms to Iran to assist then US President Ronald Reagan blew up in his face as subsequent events led to the Iran - Contra scandal. He has had his fair share of hair brain schemes, not least his vision of the Middle East as "a regional community of nations, with a common market and elected centralised bodies based on the European Community." He has seen his proudest achievement - Oslo - unravel before his eyes; a young Likud opponent who put an end to his Prime Ministership; and the brutal assassination of his colleague, rival and friend Yitzhak Rabin. "Israel has changed in one respect", he contends, recalling the assassination that nearly also took his own life. "The younger generation have discovered the dangers that come with a loss of trust". But for all that he is still optimistic, still reflecting, still wrestling with new ideas.

"Until now Israel has been preoccupied with the re-establishment of its territorial centre. It is time for us to re-establish our spiritual centre", he suggests. "I think that the last 50 years were a compensation for Jewish suffering. The coming 50 years should be an invitation to Jewish existence. What's the difference between compensation and an invitation? With an invitation you must shine. It is a uniqueness; you have to excel yourself. For me the first thing is in the moral domain. For me Oslo was a moral choice more than anything else. And I think that Israel must base its Jewish life on two documents. The moral identity card from the past and the scientific passport for the future. We have to live on our brains and to remember our roots."

When I ask him to nominate the world leader he most admires Peres cites Gandhi. "I think there are two outstanding leaders in the last 2-300 years . There was Napoleon and there was Gandhi. One had the military strength and the other, the moral strength. Gandhi didn't have armies, he didn't have nations, he went to fight single handedly; naked with his moral conscience. And I think he did better than Napoleon did. So between the two, I believe that Gandhi exemplifies the future and Napoleon, the unfortunate past."

"And how would Shimon Peres like to be remembered"? "I would like to be judged with a single sentence; that here was a man who believed that to save a life of a single person today is more important than to be inscribed in a hundred pages in the history of the world". I look at Shimon Peres who raises an eyebrow as if to say, hmmm, that wasn't bad, stick that in your story about my place in history . But he doesn't say it. He looks me squarely in the eye, softly, almost humbly he says "That's my feeling". He means it.

With that I thank him for his time and quickly leave. He is busy and his retinue of secret service agents, secretaries, advisers and minders are already descending on him. Perhaps in the end Peres is right. That cloak of grandeur is not really shouldered by those who simply make history, nor even by those who live and shape it, but perhaps rather, it will only ever be the domain of those, like Gandhi (and maybe one day even Peres too), whose virtues have enhanced it; whose moral identity card can withstand the rigours and judgement of historical reflection.