Amir Peretz

Amir Peretz (עָמִיר פֶּרֶץ; born on 9 March 1952) is an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Labor Party.

The family emigrated to Israel when Morocco won independence in 1956.

They were settled in the then development town of Sderot, Israel, where Peretz grew up until the age of 18.

He went to high school in a nearby kibbutz.

Peretz served his compulsory military service in the IDF Artillery wing between 1970 and 1972, and was selected as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces as the brigade ordnance officer of the 202nd paratroopers brigade and reached the rank of captain.

On 22 April 1974, Peretz was badly wounded as a result of an accident at the Mitla Pass.

He spent a year in the hospital recuperating.

After leaving the hospital, he bought a farm in the village of Nir Akiva.

Still in a wheelchair, he began growing vegetables and flowers for export.

During this period he met his wife Ahlama and they married.

They have four children.

It was the first in a series of local councils that passed back to Labor control in the late 1980s.

As mayor, he emphasised education and worked to improve previously fractious relations with the kibbutzim in the area.

In 1983 Peretz ran for the office of mayor of Sderot, as candidate of the Israel Labor Party.

He won, ending a long period of dominance of the town's politics by the right-wing Likud party and the National Religious Party.

A Knesset member almost continuously from 1988 to 2021, he has served as Minister of Defence, Minister of Economy, and Minister of Environmental Protection, as well as heading the Histadrut trade union federation between 1995 and 2006.

After five years as mayor of Sderot, Peretz first became an MK for the Labor-dominated Alignment in 1988.

In 1988 he was elected a member of the Knesset.

In 1994, after failing in a previous bid for Histadrut leadership, Peretz joined forces with Haim Ramon to contest control of the then powerful trade union federation.

They ran on an independent list against the favoured candidate of then Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin.

They won, and Peretz became Ramon's deputy at the Histadrut, isolating him within the Labor Party.

He became chairman of the Histadrut in December 1995, when Ramon reentered the cabinet following Rabin's assassination.

During his early years at the helm of the Histadrut, Peretz was regarded as a militant firebrand, with an easy hand on the trigger of general strikes.

Sometimes the pretext for declaring a general strike would be an inopportune statement by the finance minister, as had been the case with Ya'akov Ne'eman in 1996.

In 1999 he left Labor to establish his own party, One Nation, which he led until merging it back into Labor in 2004.

The following year he defeated Shimon Peres in a Labor leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition.

Following the 2006 elections Labor joined the Kadima-led coalition government, with Peretz appointed Minister of Defense and Deputy Prime Minister.

His subsequent tenure as Defense Minister included the 2006 Lebanon War and approval of the Iron Dome defence system in early 2007.

Midway through 2007 Peretz was defeated by Ehud Barak in another Labor leadership election and resigned from the cabinet.

In December 2012, he resigned from the Knesset after leaving Labor to join the new Hatnuah party, but soon returned to the legislature after being re-elected in the January 2013 elections.

Following the elections, Hatnuah joined the coalition government and Peretz was appointed Minister of Environmental Protection.

However, he resigned the following year due to his opposition to the government budget.

Shortly after 2015 elections, which Labor and Hatnuah had contested together as the Zionist Union, Peretz rejoined the Labor Party.

In 2019 he was elected leader of the party for a second time.

He was succeeded by Merav Michaeli on 24 January 2021.

In December 2020, Peretz announced he was running for President of Israel.

He left the Knesset on 29 January 2021 and was replaced by Ilan Gilon, a member of Meretz.

Armand Peretz was born in Boujad, Morocco to a Sephardic Jewish family during the French protectorate.

His father David was head of the Jewish community in Boujad.

He worked as a Civil Engineer in the French Civil Services.