Interviewing the late former Israeli President Shimon Peres on the occasion of his 90th birthday, I asked him what it takes to be a good leader.
“If you want to be a leader serve, because what you can achieve by goodwill, you cannot achieve by power,” he said.
And serve he did.
Peres died Wednesday, but his career was intertwined in extraordinary fashion with the story of the state of Israel from its inception. A member of the Knesset for 48 years, Peres served in 12 cabinets, including as minister for finance, defense and foreign affairs; in 2007 he was elected as Israel’s ninth President. But Peres’ view of leadership also reflected perhaps the greatest disappointment of his long career — he served as Prime Minister, but was never elected in his own right.
Still, his legacy — despite his mistakes and imperfections, which his detractors were only too ready to point out — will endure, particularly in the face of a leadership vacuum in Israel and throughout the Middle East.
A rare act in politics
Few leaders of democratic polities have served their countries longer than Peres without ever achieving their nation’s highest office. Peres would serve as Prime Minister during a rotational arrangement with the opposition Likud party — 1984 to 1986 — and again briefly in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But he was never elected to the office with a popular mandate of his own.
Despite this, Peres’ role in defense policy and peacemaking was vitally salient and central to the success of the modern Israeli state.
Somewhat paradoxically, Peres emerged in his later years as a leader identified with peacemaking, despite beginning his career on the security and defense side. A protégé of arguably Israel’s greatest prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Peres would become the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Defense, where he played a central role in shaping Israel’s industrial and military capacity and developing its secret nuclear weapons program.
Unrequited peacemaker
But above all, Peres seemed to aspire to be a peacemaker. Unsuccessful efforts to reach an agreement on a confederal arrangement with Jordan’s King Hussein in the 1980s would be followed in the early 1990s by perhaps Peres’ most valiant yet controversial legacy: the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians.
I remember how buoyant Peres was in 1993 after the Oslo signing ceremony — and how enthusiastic all of us were. And I know that he must have been thinking that he — a man who had championed the Palestinian track over Rabin’s preference for a deal with Syria –now had an opportunity to leave his mark. Begin would be remembered for making peace with Egypt, and Rabin later for peace with Jordan. Peres hoped that his legacy would be an agreement that could end the conflict with the Palestinians.
Sadly, that legacy now lies broken and bloodied. Yet I believe that Peres — as a realist and not a dreamer — still believed at the end of his life in the possibility of such a peace. And he no doubt recognized the danger to Israel if it ever let go of that hope. Three years ago, during our interview, Peres told me a two-state solution was still possible and achievable. I suspect that then, he himself was not at all sure. But he understood the risks of abandoning the idea.
Peres did, of course, have his detractors. Israeli pundits and politicians often mocked what they saw as his slippery politics, political ambition, his self-centeredness, his dreamy schemes for an integrated Middle East, and the fact that he was seen as more popular outside of Israel than inside. But much of this criticism softened during the years he served as Israel’s President — as he grew in stature and amid a growing realization that he, together with Ariel Sharon, remained the last vestiges of a founding generation.
I remember listening to Peres and Sharon at a breakfast at Sharon’s farm in 2002 as they talked about what they had witnessed over the years — and talked affectionately about one another. They were so different in temperament and politics, and yet linked by a past defined by struggle, war and successful state-building.
Shimon Peres will be mourned and missed as Israel’s founding generation has given way to younger leaders who seem to lack the confidence, authenticity and moral authority of their older counterparts. His legacy is not yet fully defined. But surely, despite his failings and Israel’s own difficult situation, Peres will be remembered as a seminal force in the creation of a modern nation in the face of very long odds.
Peres lived a long and remarkable 93 years. And yet in many ways, he passed too soon. At no time in the history of his country does Israel need him more than now.
