Szymon Perski was born in Poland in 1923. As Shimon Peres, he would become Israel's ninth prime minister. In 1934, Peres fled with his family to Palestine. There he attended agricultural education and joined Hagana, which is now the Israeli army. Peres joined the Labour Party and entered the Knesset, the parliament, in 1959. He was foreign minister from 1984 to 1986 and prime minister from 1995 to 1996. In the 1996 elections, Peres lost to Netanyahu. Peres has been called ‘the man of the lost elections’ inside and outside his party. In 2005, he felt sidelined by the Labour Party. He changed direction in politics and joined Ariel Sharon's Karima Party. The latter became president two years later.

In 1994, Peres was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm along with Israel's former prime minister Yitzchak Rabin, and former enemy Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. They were awarded this prize for concluding the Oslo peace accords. Rabin was assassinated on 4 November in 1995 by an Israeli opponent of rapprochement with the Palestinians.