Key dates in the life of Shimon Peres
Following are key dates in the life of Israel's former president, prime minister and Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres, who died on Wednesday at the age of 93. - August 2 1923: Born Shimon Persky at Vishneva in what was then Poland and is now Belarus, he later took the Hebrew name Peres, meaning eagle. - 1934: Arrival in British mandatory Palestine. - 1959: Elected a member of parliament for Mapai, which would later become the Labour party. - 1984-1986: Prime minister of a Labour-Likud government of national unity. - 1993: Oversees secret negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) which lead to the signing of the Oslo accords. - 1994: Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Yitzhak Rabin (assassinated November 1995) and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (died November 2004) for their role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. - 1995: Succeeds Rabin after his murder on November 4 as premier and head of the Labour party. - June 2007: Elected Israel's ninth president. - July 2014: Stands down as president nine days before his 91st birthday and during the Gaza war, handing over his duties to Reuven Rivlin.
