Israel's former leader Yitzhak Shamir dead at 96

Israel's former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir passed away at the age of 96 on Saturday in Tel Aviv. Shamir served as Israel's seventh prime minister from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992. He also served as Knesset speaker and leader of the opposition. Moreover, he was among the founders of the Mossad.

Born Isaac Yazernitsky in 1915 in what is today Belarus and was then part of the Russian Empire, he  studied at the law faculty of Warsaw University, but cut his studies short to immigrate to what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. In 1935, after settling in Palestine, he Hebraized his surname to Shamir. In 1944 he married Shulamit  whom he had met in a detention camp.

Shamir was among the leaders of the Jewish underground group Irgun in mandatory Palestine and became part of the militant Stern Gang. After its leader Avraham Stern was killed, Shamir became one of the group's leaders. In the first years of Israel's independence, Shamir managed several commercial enterprises. In 1955, he joined the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence service, serving until 1965.

In 1969, he joined the Herut party headed by Menachem Begin and was first elected to the Knesset in 1973 as a member of the Herut successor Likud. He became speaker of the Israeli parliament in 1977, and foreign minister in 1980, before succeeding Begin as prime minister in 1983 when he retired.

In the inconclusive 1984 Knesset election, a national unity government was formed between Shamir's Likud party and the Alignment led by Shimon Peres. As part of the agreement, Peres held the post of prime minister until September 1986, when Shamir took over.

Shamir was defeated by Yitzhak Rabin's Labor Party in the 1992 election. He stepped down from the Likud leadership in March 1993, but remained a member of the Knesset until the 1996 election. In his last years he lived in a  Tel Aviv care home because of his poor health. Shamir leaves behind two children and five grandchildren. Shamir lost his wife Shlomit last year at the age of 88.

Photo: Yitzhak Shamir addressing the World Jewish Congress Plenary Assembly in Jerusalem in 1991 (copyright: Andres Lacko)