Pepper, Amir

Amir Peretz was born in Morocco. In 1956, his family repatriated to Israel. While serving in the army, he was seriously wounded in 1974 and after demobilization he settled in Nir Akiva moshav , creating a farm there with the purpose of rehabilitation after being wounded. Soon he moved to Sderot . In 1983 , having put forward his candidacy on the advice of friends, he became the first-ever mayor of this city from the Avoda party. In 1988, elected to the Knesset .

In 1994, he joined Haim Ramon in the elections to the Histadrut (an association of Israeli workers), and they bypassed the election of the leader of Avoda Yitzhak Rabin . He became Ramon's deputy, and after his resignation he became the head of the Histadrut. As the head of the Histadrut, he repeatedly organized anti-government strikes to raise wages and improve the social conditions of workers.

In the 1999 elections, Amir Peretz acted as a separate list for the Knesset from the histadrut party of the socialist persuasion Am Ehad, which received 2 seats. As the Minister of Finance from the right-wing Likud party , Benjamin Netanyahu, was dismantling state social protection programs, Peretz's popularity grew.

In 2005, the Am Ehad party merged with the Avoda party, and Peretz defeated Shimon Peres in the party’s internal party elections on November 9, 2005. After the 2006 Knesset elections, Avoda, under his leadership, became the second largest faction. He served as Minister of Defense in the government of Olmert . As Minister of Defense, he participated in the Second Lebanon War , which Israel waged against the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah . The findings of the commission of Vinograd , which investigated the activities of the leadership during the war, designated Amir Peretz as one of the culprits of failures in this operation. However, subsequently, the important role of Minister Peretz as an ideologist for creating the Iron Dome missile defense system was noted. After losing the election of the head of the Avoda party to Ehud Barak on June 12, 2007, he relieved him of the post of Minister of Defense.

In the Knesset of the 18th convocation (☎), he was a deputy from the Avoda party. According to the parliamentary situation in July 2010, he was in opposition to the party leader Ehud Barak. He and three other deputies from the Avoda party opposed the party’s participation in a coalition led by the Likud party , which subsequently led to a split in the Avoda parliamentary faction.

In November 2012, Avoda won the third place in the election list at the primaries of the party. However, on December 6, 2012, before the 19th Knesset elections, he announced his withdrawal from the Avoda party and joining the newly formed Ha-Tnua movement, led by Tzipi Livni ^[1] . Peretz's place in the Knesset was taken by Yoram Marciano ^[2] .

In March 2013, he became Minister of Environmental Protection in Israel. In this post, he became known for controversial decisions, such as the ban on free plastic bags in retail. November 9, 2014 resigned due to rejection of the government’s budget plans. Elected to the Knesset on the list of the Zionist Camp coalition, he returned to Avoda in September 2015.

Supporter of the social and democratic path of development of society and socially oriented state policy. He advocates raising the minimum wage, restricting the activities of hiring offices that underestimate wages and violate the rights of workers, introduce mandatory pensions, and strengthen labor laws in favor of the employee.

In the field of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he is a supporter of an early peaceful solution and an end to the occupation of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 . In his opinion, the funds Israel spends on maintaining settlements and occupation should be directed to improving the situation of socially weak strata of Israeli society. According to Peretz, the occupation is primarily “an immoral act, ... and one of the main reasons for the increase in violence in Israeli society, moral degradation and corruption” ^[3] .