Moshe Sharett

Moshe Sharett (משה שרת; born Moshe Chertok (משה שרתוק); 15 October 1894 – 7 July 1965) was an Israeli politician who served as the second prime minister of Israel from 1954 to 1955.

A member of Mapai, Sharett's term was both preceded and succeeded by the premiership of David Ben-Gurion.

Born in Kherson in the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), Sharett immigrated to Ottoman Palestine as a child in 1906.

For two years, 1906–1907, the family lived in a rented house in the village of Ein-Sinya, north of Ramallah.

In 1910 his family moved to Jaffa, then became one of the founding families of Tel Aviv.

He graduated from the first class of the Herzliya Hebrew High School, even studying music at the Shulamit Conservatory.

He then went to Constantinople to study law at Istanbul University, the same university at which Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and David Ben-Gurion studied.

However, his time there was cut short due to the outbreak of World War I.

He served a commission as First Lieutenant in the Ottoman Army, working as an interpreter.

In 1922, Sharett married Tzippora Meirov, with whom he had two sons, Ya'akov and Haim, and a daughter, Yael.

After the war, he worked as an Arab affairs and land purchase agent for the Assembly of Representatives of the Yishuv.

He also became a member of Ahdut Ha'Avoda, and later of Mapai.

In 1922, he attended the London School of Economics, and worked for the British Poale Zion and actively edited the Workers of Zion.

One of the people he met while in London was Chaim Weizmann.

He then worked on the Davar newspaper from 1925 until 1931.

In 1931, after returning to Mandatory Palestine, he became the secretary of the Jewish Agency's political department.

After the assassination of Haim Arlosoroff in 1933 he became its head.

During World War II, via his wife Zipporah, Sharett became embroiled in the question of emigration of refugee Jews stranded in Europe and the East.

Some Polish refugees, children with and without parents, were deported to Tehran with Soviet agreement.

The success of these negotiations and others was a hallmark of Sharett's more cerebral approach to practical problems.

He met with Tel Aviv-bound Hungarian Jewish refugee representative Joel Brand, fresh off the plane from Budapest.

Yishuv leadership mistrusted Brand, and the British thought him a criminal.

Sharett's response was to hand the self-appointed liberator over to the British authorities, who drove Brand to prison in Egypt.

Sharett's General Zionism was deeply concerned in making Palestine a commercially viable home land; secondary was the deep emotional concerns of the murder in the Diaspora, which, by 1942, was in German hands.

Like Weizmann, whom he admired, Sharett was a principled Zionist, an implacable opponent of fascism, and a practical realist, prepared to co-operate fully with the Mandate authorities.

Sharett, as Ben-Gurion's ally, denounced Irgun's assassination squads on 13 December 1947, accusing them of playing to public feelings.

Atrocities escalated, mainly upon Jews, but with reciprocal revenge killings; by the end of the war 6,000 Palestinian Jews, 1% of the population, had died.

A fourth and final agreement was signed with Syria on 17 July; the 1947–1949 Palestine war had lasted one year and seven months.

In the elections that followed, Mapai formed a coalition, deliberately excluding Herut and the Communists at Ben-Gurion's behest.

He also served as the country's first foreign minister between 1948 and 1956.

Sharett held the foreign policy post under the Jewish Agency until the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Sharett was one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence.

Sharett was elected to the Knesset in the first Israeli election in 1949, and served as Minister of Foreign Affairs during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

On 10 March he was made part of the first cabinet.

An armistice was signed with Lebanon that led to Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon on 23 March.

International negotiations hosted by Britain took place on the Greek island of Rhodes at Suneh, King Abdullah's residence when Israel's emissaries, Yigael Yadin and Walter Eytan signed with Transjordan.

Knowing the Jordanian position on the Hebron Hills, Yadin told Sharett that surrounded by hostile Arab states, Israel had to sign the Transjordan over to Iraq.

American Dr. Ralph Bunche, who drafted the United Nations (UN) treaty for Sharett's office, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The final agreement was signed at the "Grande Albergo delle Rose" in Rhodes (now the Casino Rodos) on 3 April 1949.

Ominous violence lay ahead for the new state, warned Sharett during a debate on 15 June, in which he reminded the Jewish people of their vital interests.