The former Israeli President and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres has died at the age of 93 at a hospital in Tel Aviv after his condition deteriorated following a stroke, local media report.
Peres was admitted to the medical facility two weeks ago where he was intubated and sedated, with doctors expressing cautious optimism in the days immediately following his hospitalization.
However, on Tuesday the former top politician suffered a serious setback incurring irreversible brain damage, The Times of Israel reported.
In January, Peres was transported to a hospital following a heart attack. He underwent emergency surgery but had to be admitted to the hospital again just over a week later due to an irregular heartbeat.
Peres was active in Israeli politics for nearly 70 years and retired in 2014 after serving a seven year term as the country’s ninth’s president.
Prior to that, he held nearly every position in the Israeli government. He served as Prime Minister three times, including once as interim. He also held the post of Israeli Defence and Foreign Affairs Minister and joined the cabinet as the Minister for Transportation and Finance.
As a Foreign Minister Peres was the one to finalize the interim Israeli Palestinian Oslo Peace deal.
While it did not turn into a lasting treaty, in 1994 he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts along with the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Peres has been a staunch advocate of the two-state solution with Palestine, trying to boost the process following Rabin’s assassination in 1995. However his positions in the matter weakened following a string of suicide attacks by Palestinians and mounting pressure from Israeli nationalists.
He remained a vocal supporter of the peace process with the Palestinians, but stressed that the recognition of an independent Palestinian state outside a UN-proposed plan would be wrong. – RT.
