The tributes that poured in and the world leaders who attended his funeral portrayed Shimon Peres as a man of peace, but he was also instrumental in directing the worst of Israeli policies.
Peres was a formidable Arab foe when the Israelis were building their state. As defense minister, he helped create Israel’s defense industry. He negotiated major arms deals with Germany and secured a reliable flow of weapons from France in the 1950s when other Western nations were refusing to sell arms to the new state. He was a key figure in the development of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, persuading the French government to sell Israel the reactor that formed the basis of its still-unacknowledged nuclear weapons program. He supported the Jewish settler movement as it set out after the 1967 Middle East war to build militarized communities on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Peres' reputation was blighted forever by Qana, the 1996 shelling in southern Lebanon that killed more than 100 people sheltering in a UN compound. It took place when, as prime minister, he ordered the so-called Grapes of Wrath operation against Beirut in retaliation for Lebanese Hezbollah's escalated rocket fire on northern Israel. He said it was a "bitter surprise" to find that several hundred people were in the camp at the time. But a UN investigation later stated it was unlikely that the Israeli shelling was a technical or procedural error after video evidence showed that an Israeli drone was spying on the compound before the shelling. Amnesty International concluded that Israel had intentionally attacked the UN compound and refused to substantiate its claim that the attack was a mistake. Human Rights Watch concurred, saying the decision to shell without warning and in close proximity to a large concentration of civilians violated a key principle of international humanitarian law.
Even if Peres’ argument that he did not know civilians were in the compound were accepted, he would still bear responsibility for killing so many civilians by taking the risk of launching an attack so close to a UN compound. Israel knew that UN positions were not legitimate targets and the fact that the attack proceeded indicated a callous disregard for civilian lives and a breach of the laws of war on directly or indiscriminately targeting civilians.
Then came the Oslo peace accords in which Peres played a part. The accords were meant to achieve a peace treaty and to fulfill the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. But a closer look at the fine print shows that Oslo resulted only in the recognition by the PLO of Israel, and the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and as a partner in negotiations. The most important issues – the borders of Palestine and Israel, Israeli settlements, the status of Jerusalem, the question of Israel's military presence in and control over the remaining territories after the recognition of the Palestinian autonomy by Israel, and the Palestinian right of return - were never settled. Because the foundation of the accords was flimsy from the start, Oslo pretty much faded after the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit. The outbreak of the second Intifada buried it.
Oslo earned Peres a share of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. But with time, it became apparent that his stint as defense minister, when he was supportive of the large-scale colonization by Jewish settlers, had severely damaged the efforts of his or any other Israeli leader to make peace with the Palestinians.
Peres did indeed personify the history of Israel because he was at the forefront of every phase of it. But during the time in which the light shone on him the most, he was certainly not a man of peace.
