Menachem Begin

Menachem Begin (August 16, 1913 – 9 March 1992) is an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel.

Before independence, he is the leader of the Zionist militant terrorist group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah.

He proclaims a revolt, on February 1, 1944, against the British mandatory government, which is opposed by the Jewish Agency.

As head of the Irgun, he targets the British in Palestine.

Begin is elected to the first Knesset, as head of Herut, the party he founds, and is at first on the political fringe, embodying the opposition to the Mapai-led government and Israeli establishment.

He remains in opposition in the eight consecutive elections (except for a national unity government around the Six-Day War), but becomes more acceptable to the political center.

His 1977 electoral victory and premiership end three decades of Labor Party political dominance.

Begin’s most significant achievement as Prime Minister is the signing of a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, for which he and Anwar Sadat share the Nobel Prize for Peace.

In the wake of the Camp David Accords, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, which had been captured from Egypt in the Six-Day War.

Later, Begin’s government promotes the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Begin authorizes the bombing of the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq and the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to fight PLO strongholds there, igniting the 1982 Lebanon War.

As Israeli military involvement in Lebanon deepens, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre, carried out by Christian Phalangist militia allies of the Israelis, shocks world public opinion, Begin grows increasingly isolated.

As IDF forces remain mired in Lebanon and the economy suffers from hyperinflation, the public pressure on Begin mounts.

Depressed by the death of his wife Aliza in November 1982, he gradually withdraws from public life, until his resignation in October 1983.

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