Ambassador
For Peace

NAOMI SEGAL

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

I

Jerusalem
srael's first ambassador to Egypt after the 1979 treaty was
signed is being remembered as a diplomat who helped
cement the peace between both countries.
Israel's ambassador to France, Eliahu Ben-Elissar, 68,
died of a heart attack in Paris on Aug. 12.
As ambassador to Egypt, Ben-Elissar "poured content into the
new peace between the two states," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak said Aug. 13.
Mr. Ben-Elissar served for 10
years in the Mossad, Israel's for- '
eign intelligence agency, before
embarking on a career in politics. ',T.
After Mr. Ben-Elissar joined
the Likud Party, former Prime
Minister Menachem Begin
appointed him director general
of the Prime Minister's Office in
1977. Later elected as a Likud
legislator, Ben-Elissar served for
two terms as the hawkish chair-
man of the Knesset's powerful
Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee.
Likud colleague Uzi Landau,
who now heads the committee,
described Mr. Ben-Elissar as a
"bitter opponent" of the Oslo
accords.
Former Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu appointed
Ben-Elissar ambassador to the
United States in 1996 and to
France in 1998. His death over
the weekend came just after he
and other Israeli diplomats had
been asked to return home by
Barak, who last week assumed
the post of foreign minister after
David Levy resigned.
Born in Radom, Poland, in
1932, Mr. Ben-Elissar arrived in
Israeli Ambassador Eliahu Ben-Elissar
Palestine 10 years later. He was
in 1997 at the Seeds of Peace camp in
the only member of his family to Maine.
survive the Holocaust. -
In addition to his wife, Nitza,
he is survived by two children. El

Below are remarks Ambassador

Eliahu Ben-Elissar Made to Seeds of

Peace campers when he and his
wife visited in 1997:

"Peace, after all, depends on
people. That's where you come in .

Agreements between, leaders must
be reinforced by relationships
between people. Arabs, Israelis
and Palestinians must come .e . . risee
one another not as advej:;:'
stereotypes r utas
with ho
ect and un
ce:sure

•

sonal courage
the kind that
you have shown.
"Seeds of Peace has helped
all of is to understand that
peace is in the heart, not just
on paper. And it has helped
remind us why peace in the
Middle East is so urgent:
because the
are far,

precious

and terrq.
"Looking at
Middle East free of war, r
web of economic and persii;
ties hasrie
mistru s t a f .
de sP tand
dnm;
laceig
misunderstanding;
$ such as those you h ave F
e are the norm, not
on and where your c
M. x
grandchildren
hbors committe d
e nd peace.:
th e participants o
-ce, are accomplishing the
t steps of this coexistenc-

i he Palestinian ancit*,
:,.which will lea se to

,343,Z

,,I..::::*'

f,...

,,

re $

-

•-• ,, kanzq §:W%Vt , '' \%„ -',..
stIlt, ,...\ 4. .,.

kk,„:"'-' ,

, ., ‘' tf\%,
,,,,,' - ..k . , s ." ,p ,

,

NI:4"
•Agt

4 „

• ';'-o, eb.....,
.

1 0 11111 1

8/18

2000

137