Editing Yitzhak Shamir (section)

==Political career==
{{Conservatism in Israel|Politicians}}
<!-- His stance on the Egypt deal, leaving outposts/settlements/dispute with Netanyahu -->
[[File:Shamir Weinberger 1982.jpg|thumb|250px|Foreign Minister Shamir with US Secretary of Defense [[Caspar Weinberger]], 1982]]
[[File:President George H. W. Bush meets with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Shamir at the White House.jpg|thumb|Shamir meeting with US President [[George H. W. Bush]] at the White House in 1990]]
In 1969, Shamir joined the [[Herut]] party headed by [[Menachem Begin]] and was first elected to the [[Knesset]] in 1973 as a member of the [[Likud]].<ref>Woolf, Alex. The Arab-Israeli Conflict. Milwaukee, WI: World Almanac Library, 2004. Print.</ref> He became [[List of Knesset speakers|Speaker of the Knesset]] in 1977, and [[Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel|Foreign Minister]] in 1980 which he remained until 1986, concurrently serving as prime minister from October 1983 to September 1984 after Begin's resignation.

Shamir had a reputation as a [[Likud]] hard-liner. In 1977 he presided at the [[Knesset]] visit of Egyptian President [[Anwar Sadat]]. He abstained in the Knesset votes to approve the [[Camp David Accords]] and the [[Egyptian–Israeli Peace Treaty|Peace Treaty with Egypt]]. In 1981 and 1982, as Foreign Minister, he guided negotiations with Egypt to normalize relations after the treaty. Following the [[1982 Lebanon War]] he directed negotiations which led to the [[May 17 Agreement|May 17, 1983 Agreement]] with Lebanon, which did not materialize.

===Prime minister===
Shamir won the [[1983 Herut leadership election]] against [[David Levy (Israeli politician)|David Levy]] to succeed Begin as leader of Herut, the Likud, and Prime Minister of Israel. Shamir won reelection as party leader in the [[1984 Herut leadership election]], defeating a challenge from [[Ariel Sharon]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Max |first1=Arthur |title=Israel's ruling party in trouble as elections near |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/320486479/ |via=Newspapers.com |work=Tampa Bay Times  |agency=Associated Press |access-date=13 February 2022 |language=en |url-access=subscription |date=3 May 1984}}</ref> His failure to stabilize Israel's inflationary economy and to suggest a solution to the quagmire of Lebanon led to an [[1984 Israeli legislative election|indecisive election in 1984]]. Shamir lost the election but was able to retain his post as foreign minister in a [[national unity government]] between the [[Likud]] alliance and the [[Alignment (political party)|Alignment]] led by Prime Minister [[Shimon Peres]]. As part of the agreement, Peres held the post of Prime Minister until September 1986, when Shamir returned to the prime ministership and Peres became foreign minister.

As he prepared to reclaim the office of prime minister, Shamir's hard-line image appeared to moderate. However, Shamir remained reluctant to change the status quo in Israel's relations with its Arab neighbours and blocked Peres's initiative to promote a regional peace conference as agreed in 1987 with [[King Hussein of Jordan]] in what has become known as the [[Peres-Hussein London Agreement|London Agreement]]. [[1988 Israeli legislative election|Re-elected in 1988]], Shamir and Peres formed a new coalition government until "[[The dirty trick (Israel)|the dirty trick]]" of 1990, when the Alignment left the government, leaving Shamir with a narrow right-wing coalition. During this period the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip launched the [[first Intifada]], which was suppressed with force by the Israeli government.

Shamir urged the US government to stop granting refugee visas to Soviet Jews, persuading it that they were not refugees because they already had a homeland in Israel and were only moving to the United States for economic reasons. He also termed the emigration of Soviet Jews to the United States rather than to Israel "defection", and called the issuing of US refugee visas to Soviet Jews when Israel was already willing to take them in "an insult to Israel". In 1989, [[1990s Post-Soviet aliyah|a wave of Jewish emigration]] began from the Soviet Union after the Soviets allowed their Jewish population to emigrate freely. In October of that year, the US agreed to his requests and stopped issuing refugee visas to Soviet emigrants. Subsequently, Israel became the main destination of Soviet Jewish emigrants. Over one million Soviet immigrants would subsequently arrive in Israel, many of whom would have likely gone to the United States had Shamir not pressed the US government to change its policy.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/yitzhak-shamir-the-prime-minister-who-spied-on-me-1.448060 |title=Yitzhak Shamir, the prime minister who spied on me |newspaper=Haaretz |access-date=2012-08-12 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402232402/http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/yitzhak-shamir-the-prime-minister-who-spied-on-me-1.448060 |archive-date=2015-04-02 }}</ref>
[[File:Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - PM Yitzhak Shamir Greets new immigrants from Ethiopia.jpg|thumb|240px|Shamir greets new [[Operation Solomon|immigrants from Ethiopia]], 1991]]

In September 1989, a journalist for the [[Jerusalem Post]] asked Shamir, "Doesn't it amaze you that in Poland, where hardly a Jew is left, there should still be a powerful anti-Semitic presence?" Shamir replied "They suck it in with their mother's milk! This is something that is deeply imbued in their tradition, their mentality."<ref name=JP1989>{{cite news| newspaper = Jerusalem Post | author = David Landau | title = We can't fight the whole world  | date = 8 September 1989 | page = 04}}</ref> The comment caused public and diplomatic controversy within [[Poland]] as being [[libel]]ous.<ref>{{cite web |title=Shamir's Remarks About Poland Held Up Diplomatic Relations | url=https://www.jta.org/archive/shamirs-remarks-about-poland-held-up-diplomatic-relations |website=Jewish Telegraphic Agency |date=8 December 1989}}</ref>{{sfn |Nowak-Jezioranski |2001 |p = 1 |ps =: 'To conclude from the 1941 pogroms that the Holocaust was the common work of Poles and Germans is a libel. All who feel themselves to be Polish have the responsibility to defend themselves against such slander. The majority of Polish society might be charged with having an attitude of indifference to the extermination of the Jews — if not for the fact that the entire civilized world reacted to the fact of genocide with indifference and passivity. The difference is that Poles were eyewitnesses, defenseless witnesses living in constant fear for their lives and the lives of their families.'}} [[Adam Michnik]] later addressed the comment by stating "the stubborn categorization of Poland as an anti-Semitic nation was used in Europe and America as an [[alibi]] for the [[Western betrayal|betrayal of Poland]] at [[Yalta Conference|Yalta]]. The nation so categorized was seen as unworthy of sympathy, or of help, or of compassion."<ref>Adam Michnik, editor-in-chief, ''Gazeta Wyborcza'', [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1991/may/30/poland-and-the-jews/?pagination=false "Poland and the Jews", a speech at Central Synagogue in New York] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016230311/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1991/may/30/poland-and-the-jews/?pagination=false |date=October 16, 2015}}</ref>

In a 1996 interview with the Polish newspaper [[Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)|Rzeczpospolita]], Shamir said the controversy was based on a misunderstanding of what he said:

{{Quote|Once these words were published out of context, I did not find it necessary to straighten them out, because any reasonable person should understand that they should not be read literally. It is known that mother's food does not contain any ingredients that affect the formation of an infant's consciousness when it grows up and begins to think. These words were a metaphor to express the idea that anti-Semitic feelings or views, as well as many other positive and negative feelings and views, come from the family home.<ref>{{cite web |title=Icchak Szamir tłumaczył w "Rz": Nie oskarżałem całego narodu |url=https://www.rp.pl/historia/art1474431-icchak-szamir-tlumaczyl-w-rz-nie-oskarzalem-calego-narodu |publisher=[[Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)|Rzeczpospolita]]|access-date=4 December 2022}}</ref>}}

During the [[Gulf War]], [[Ba'athist Iraq|Iraq]] fired [[Scud]] missiles at Israel, many of which struck population centers. Iraq hoped to provoke Israeli retaliation and thus alienate Arab members of the United States-assembled coalition against Iraq. Shamir deployed [[Israeli Air Force]] jets to patrol the northern airspace with Iraq. However, after the United States and the Netherlands deployed Patriot antimissile batteries to protect Israel, and US and British special forces began hunting for Scuds, Shamir responded to American calls for restraint, recalled the jets, and agreed not to retaliate.

[[File:Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - P.M. Yitzhak Shamir.jpg|thumb|Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir sniffs an [[ethrog]] during his visit to the Sukkot market in the Geula quarter in Jerusalem, 1988]] 

During his term, Shamir reestablished diplomatic relations between Israel and several dozen African, Asian and other countries. In May 1991, as the [[People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia|Ethiopian]] government of [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]] was collapsing, Shamir ordered the airlifting of 14,000 [[Beta Israel|Ethiopian Jews]], known as [[Operation Solomon]]. He continued his efforts, begun in the late 1960s, to bring Soviet Jewish refugees to Israel. Shamir restored diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Israel in October 1991, and following its dissolution, established relations between Israel and his native Belarus in May 1992.<ref>Joffe, Emmanuel, The Man from Ruzhany, Belarus, Served In The Mossad And Was The Prime Minister of Israel, Vecherny Minsk October 17, 2005 (Monday). № 235 (10911)</ref> Shamir was dedicated to bringing Jews from all over the world to Israel, and called on American Jews to emigrate to Israel in spite of a higher standard of living in the US, saying that he expected even American Jewish youth to realize that "man does not live by bread alone" but to "learn and understand Jewish history, the Bible... and reach the only conclusion: to come on aliya to Israel."{{Sfn | Golan | 2011 | pp = 219, 223}}

Relations with the US were strained in the period after the war over the [[Madrid Peace Conference of 1991|Madrid peace talks]], which Shamir opposed. As a result, US President [[George H. W. Bush]] was reluctant to approve loan guarantees to help absorb immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Finally, Shamir gave in and in October 1991 participated in the Madrid talks. His narrow, right-wing government collapsed, and new elections were necessarily called.

[[1992 Likud leadership election|In a February 1992 leadership election]], Shamir retained his leadership of Likud, defeating challenges from David Levy and Ariel Sharon.

One of Shamir's last acts as Prime Minister was to approve the 16 February 1992 assassination of the leader of [[Hizbullah]], Sheikh [[Abbas al-Musawi]].

===Electoral defeat and retirement===
[[File:Premier Lubbers ontvangt minister Shamir, Bestanddeelnr 933-2508.jpg|Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir with [[Ruud Lubbers]], 1985|thumb]]

Shamir was defeated by [[Yitzhak Rabin]]'s [[Labor Party (Israel)|Labour]] in the [[1992 Israeli legislative election|1992 election]]. He stepped down from the Likud leadership in March 1993 but remained a member of the Knesset until the 1996 election. For some time, Shamir was a critic of his Likud successor, [[Benjamin Netanyahu]], as being too indecisive in dealing with the Arabs. Shamir went so far as to resign from the Likud in 1998 and endorse [[Herut – The National Movement|Herut]], a right-wing splinter movement led by [[Benny Begin]], which later joined the [[National Union (Israel)|National Union]] during the 1999 election. After Netanyahu was defeated, Shamir returned to the Likud fold and supported [[Ariel Sharon]] in the 2001 election. He was placed honorary 120th last spot on the [[Likud]] list in the [[2003 Israeli legislative election]]. Subsequently, in his late eighties, Shamir ceased making public comments.