Israel’s leaders have placed wreaths at the coffin of former Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres as his body lies in state outside parliament.
A ceremony was held in silence for Mr Peres, who has died at the age of 93.
His coffin will remain in front of the parliament building in Jerusalem ahead of his funeral on Friday. Thousands of people are expected to pay tribute.
Mr Peres was one of the last of a generation of politicians present at Israel’s birth in 1948.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his role negotiating the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians a year earlier, a prize he shared with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Mr Peres had suffered a stroke two weeks ago and died on Wednesday in a hospital near Tel Aviv.
Israelis are being given the opportunity to visit Peres’ coffin, which is draped in the blue-and-white national flag, until Thursday night.
He will receive a state burial at a ceremony on Friday at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem.
resident Obama with Shimon Peres at a state dinner in Jerusalem in March 2013 after Mr. Peres bestowed on him Israel’s Presidential Medal of Distinction. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Peres’s time ran out on Wednesday as he died at 93, two weeks after a stroke. Mr. Obama finds his own time running short, at least his time in the world’s most powerful office, and he is contemplating a second act, always a specialty of Mr. Peres’s. In the end, they had more in common than might have been imagined, two Nobel Peace laureates who found peace maddeningly out of reach.
Mr. Obama’s response to Mr. Peres’s death on Wednesday was striking. He issued a statement that was unusually long and personal, and he called Mr. Peres’s children with condolences even before they had announced their father’s death to the world. Mr. Obama made plans to attend the funeral on Friday, only the second time in nearly eight years in office he has traveled overseas to say farewell to a foreign leader. (The other was Nelson Mandela.)
“I will always be grateful that I was able to call Shimon my friend,” Mr. Obama said in the statement. “Shimon,” he added, “was the essence ofIsrael itself.”
The American president was hardly the only world leader on Wednesday to pile on praise. Presidents, prime ministers and the pope all hailed Mr. Peres as a champion of peace.
Many of them will also attend the funeral at Mount Herzl, the Israeli national cemetery, including heads of state or government from France, Canada and Germany. Joining Mr. Obama will be former President Bill Clinton, who hosted Mr. Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat in 1993 on the White House lawn for the signing of the Oslo peace accords.
Pope Francis will not travel to Israel on Friday to attend the funeral of Shimon Peres, despite an announcement to the contrary by Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
A spokesman for the ministry said Francis was expected to attend the funeral, along with US President Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Prince Charles and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
However, the Vatican has announced the Pope’s scheduled visit to Georgia will go ahead as planned on Friday.
Who was Shimon Peres?
Born in 1923 in Wisniew, Poland, now Vishnyeva, Belarus
First elected to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in 1959
Served in 12 governments, including once as president and twice as prime minister
Seen as a hawk in his early years, when he negotiated arms deals for the fledgling nation
In 1996 he ordered the so-called Operation Grapes of Wrath on Beirut in retaliation for Lebanese Hezbollah’s escalated rocket-fire on northern Israel. The bombing campaign killed and injured hundreds of civilians
A member of the government that approved the building of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, though he came to see them as an obstacle to peace
But played a key part in reaching the Oslo peace accords, the first deal between Israel and the Palestinians, which said they would “strive to live in peaceful coexistence”
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