13 June 2007
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres, 83, has been elected by the Knesset as the new head of state of Israel. Peres will succeed Moshe Katsav, who was forced to step down over allegations that he sexually assaulted four women. In the secret ballot on Wednesday, Peres beat his two contenders, the former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin from the Likud, and Colette Avital, the Labor Party candidate. In the first round, Peres had polled 58 votes, with 37 for Rivlin and 21 for Avital. His contenders then bowed out of the contest.
Shimon Peres, a top aide to Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, became a politician in his own right in 1959, when he was elected to the Knesset for the first time. He has held every major cabinet post and was minister of defense, finance and foreign affairs – and served three brief stints as prime minister, in 1977, between 1984 and 1986, and in 1995/96, following the murder of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. For nearly all his political life, Peres had been a member of Israel's Labor Party. But after he lost the party leadership contest to Amir Peretz, Peres joined the new Kadima Party, founded by his longtime friend and political rival, Ariel Sharon. In 2000, Shimon Peres lost his first bid for the Israeli presidency to Moshe Katsav.
Peres is esteemed by world leaders who appreciate his efforts to bring peace to the troubled Middle East. His key role in the first Israeli-Palestinian peace accord of September 1993 won him the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Rabin and then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Meanwhile, the former prime minister Ehud Barak has stepped back into the political spotlight in Israel after defeating Ami Ayalon in the contest for the leadership of the Labor Party. Barak won 34,542 votes (51.3%), while Ayalon received 32,117 (47.7%). The voter turnout was 65%.
