Shamir, Yitzḥak

Yitzḥak Shamir, original name Yitzḥak Jazernicki, also spelled Yezernitzky, Yizernitsky, or Ysernitzky, (born October 15, 1915, Ruzinoy, Poland, Russian Empire [now Ruzhany, Belarus]—died June 30, 2012, Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel), Polish-born Zionist leader and prime minister of Israel in 1983–84 and 1986–90 (in alliance with Shimon Peres of the Labour Party) and in 1990–92.

Shamir joined the Beitar Zionist youth movement as a young man and studied law in Warsaw. He immigrated to Palestine in 1935 and enrolled at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. There he joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL) underground movement; and in 1940, following a policy split in the IZL, he joined the Israel Freedom Fighters (IFF), a terrorist group later known as the Stern Gang (after its founder, Abraham Stern).

Following the death of Stern, Shamir played a central part in reorganizing the Sternist Central Committee. Shamir was arrested by the British-mandate authorities in 1941 and 1946. After his second escape from internment, he made his way to France, where he was granted asylum. He returned to Israel in May 1948 and then served as a Mossad secret-service operative in Europe until 1965. After engaging in private commerce for a time, he joined Menachem Begin’s Herut movement, which in 1973 joined with other smaller parties to form the Likud. In March 1975 Shamir was elected chairman of the party executive of Herut. First elected to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in 1973, he became speaker of the Knesset after the Likud’s electoral victory in 1977.

Begin, as prime minister, appointed Shamir to be minister of foreign affairs in March 1980. In September 1983 the Likud Party elected Shamir to succeed the retiring Begin as its new leader, but he lost the prime ministry in the indecisive elections of July 1984. In September 1984 Shamir, the Likud hard-liner, and Shimon Peres, head of the Labour Party, formed a makeshift coalition government in which Peres served as prime minister for the first half of a 50-month term and Shamir served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister; the roles were reversed for the second 25 months, and Shamir thus assumed the office of prime minister in October 1986. After similarly indecisive elections in 1988, the Likud and Labour parties formed another coalition government, with Shamir as prime minister. In 1990, after his government fell, Shamir eventually succeeded in forming his own coalition government (without Labour), including several representatives of ultraconservative groups. In the general elections of 1992, the Likud lost and Shamir’s government fell.