Former Israeli PM and Nobel laureate Shimon Peres (93) passed away while being treated at a hospital in Israel’s capital Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Peres was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his role in the Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority and form the basis of negotiations to fulfill the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”.
Peres had twice served as prime minister of Israel and later as the country’s ninth president.

In more than six decades of political life his defining achievement was as one of the key architects of the Oslo peace accords, for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1994 with the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Those peace agreements – signed in Washington in 1993 and Taba, Egypt in 1995, – foresaw the creation of a Palestinian state, and were named after the Norwegian capital where the two sides launched eight months of secret negotiations in which Peres played a key role.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said: “He worked tirelessly for a two-state solution that would enable Israel to live securely and harmoniously with the Palestinians and the wider region.