35 Facts About Amir Peretz

Amir Peretz is an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Labor Party.

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

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

Amir Peretz was succeeded by Merav Michaeli on 24 January 2021.

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

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

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

Amir Peretz went to high school in a nearby kibbutz.

Amir 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, Amir Peretz was badly wounded in an accident at the Mitla Pass.

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

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

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

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

However, in his later years as head of Histadrut, Amir Peretz was seen as becoming much more moderate, as he moved toward a potential run for national office.

Amir Peretz has remarked that "the most effective strike is the one that didn't occur".

In 1999 Amir Peretz resigned from the Labor Party to form his own party, One Nation.

Amir Peretz narrowly defeated Peres, the incumbent leader, in the election on 9 November 2005.

Amir Peretz's nomination was a breakthrough in the relationship between the Arab-Israeli population and the Israeli government.

Amir Peretz was criticised for abandoning the social agenda that headlined his campaign and accepting the Defense portfolio because of its prestige, rather than the Finance portfolio that better corresponded with the Labor Party social agenda.

Amir Peretz was defeated by former Labor Party chairman and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and resigned from his post.

Amir Peretz remained in the Knesset after losing his leadership role in the Labor Party and was re-elected in 2009.

Amir Peretz opposed Ehud Barak's decision to enter a coalition government headed by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Amir Peretz was re-elected to the Knesset on the Hatnuah list in the 2013 elections, and was appointed Minister of Environmental Protection.

Amir Peretz was re-elected as Labor party leader in the 2019 Israeli Labor Party leadership election.

On 22 April 2020, following the 2020 Israeli legislative election, Labor announced that it will join the Netanyahu-Gantz coalition, with Amir Peretz serving as Minister of the Economy.

Amir Peretz was sworn in to this position of 17 May 2020.

In matters concerning relations with the Palestinians and the Arab world, candidate Amir Peretz was seen in 2005 as holding dovish positions.

Amir Peretz was one of the early leaders of the Peace Now movement.

Amir Peretz was, in the 1980s, a member of a group of eight Labor party Knesset members, dubbed "the Eight" and led by Yossi Beilin, who tried to set a liberal agenda for the party in matters concerning the peace process with the Palestinians.

Amir Peretz was said to connect the peace process and internal Israeli social issues.

Amir Peretz claimed to believe that the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians has been a hindrance to the solution of some of Israel's most pressing social ills, such as rising inequality, claiming that he saw the resources allotted to the settlements in the West Bank as having diverted funds that could have helped to solve these problems.

Amir Peretz had described the conflict as having mutated Israeli politics, so that the traditional left-right distinctions do not hold: Instead of supporting a social-democratic left which would advance their cause, the lower classes, mostly of Middle Eastern Jewish origins, were diverted to the right by the fanning of nationalist tendencies.

Amir Peretz claimed that this is why he saw an intrinsic connection between a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the resolving of Israel's internal social tensions.

In 2008 Amir Peretz backed direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian movement Hamas.