World leaders gather for funeral of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres

JERUSALEM — World leaders from US President Barack Obama to Prince Charles were expected in Israel on Friday (Sept 30) for the funeral for ex-prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres.

Security forces were on high alert for the funeral at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl national cemetery, with roads closed and thousands of officers deployed.

Some 70 countries were to be represented, with the range of leaders illustrating the respect Peres gained over the years in his transformation from hawk to committed peace advocate.

His death on Wednesday at the age of 93 led to an outpouring of tributes worldwide for Israel’s last remaining founding father.

An estimated 30,000 people filed past his coffin as his body lay in state outside Parliament in Jerusalem on Thursday.

Former US president Bill Clinton was among those who paid last respects there, appearing moved as he stood in silence before the coffin.

Mr Clinton had helped usher in the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s, which resulted in the Nobel Peace Prize for Peres.

After Peres’s death, he called him “a genius with a big heart”.

Mr Obama is expected to arrive on Friday morning and depart after the ceremony.

In a rare visit to Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, who signed the Oslo accords and negotiated with Peres, will also attend the funeral.

Peres will be buried next to Yitzhak Rabin, Peres’s rival in the Labour party but partner in negotiating the Oslo accords. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist opposed to the accords.

CRITICISM FROM ARAB NATIONS

In a career spanning seven decades, Peres held nearly every major office, serving twice as prime minister and as president, a mainly ceremonial role, from 2007 to 2014.

He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.

He was also an architect of Israel’s undeclared nuclear programme, with the country now considered the Middle East’s sole nuclear-armed nation, though it has never declared it.

While those in the West and within Israel have hailed Peres as a peacemaker, many Palestinians and those from Arab nations have called him a “war criminal”.

They have cited his involvement in successive Arab-Israeli wars, the occupation of Palestinian territory and his support for settlement building before his work on Oslo.

He was also prime minister in 1996 when more than 100 civilians were killed while sheltering at a UN peacekeepers’ base in the Lebanese village of Qana fired upon by Israel.

Islamist movement Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, condemned Abbas for offering condolences to Peres’s family, saying it “disregards the blood of the martyrs and the suffering of the Palestinian people”.

Abbas however called Peres a “brave” partner for peace.

There have been very few tributes from Arab nations, though Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry is due to attend the funeral. AFP