Binyamin Ben-Eliezer

Brigadier-General (Res.) Binyamin "Fouad" Ben-Eliezer (Hebrew: בנימין "פואד" בן אליעזר; Arabic: بنيامين بن إليعازر, born 12 February 1936) is an Israeli politician and former soldier. He was the first Iraqi Jew to lead the Israeli Labour party. On 4 May 2006, he became Minister of National Infrastructure in the Kadima-led coalition government.

Biography

Born in Iraq, Ben-Eliezer immigrated to Israel in 1950. He entered the Israeli army in 1954, and became a career soldier. A native and fluent Arabic-speaker, he earned the nickname Fouad while in the army. He served as a Commander in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, and was wounded in the War of Attrition. In 1977, he was appointed First Commanding Officer in Southern Lebanon, serving as the army liaison between the Lebanese Christian militias and Israel. He was Military Governor of the West Bank (1978-81) and was Government Coordinator of Activities in the Israeli-occupied territories from 1983-84.

Elected to the Knesset in 1984, Ben-Eliezer was the Minister of Housing and Construction, the Minister of Communications, the Minister of Defense, and the Deputy Prime Minister. He is currently a member of the Labor-Meimad parliamentary group.

Ben-Eliezer is considered a hawk on foreign policy and was one of the main architects of the invasion of Lebanon as well as a strong proponent for Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin. He has advocated halting peace talks with Palestinians until there is an end to violence against Israelis, although he believes once their leadership is able to put a stop to "terrorism" and abandon it as a political tool there should be "compromise" in final status talks with the Palestinian Authority.

He lives in Rishon LeZion and is married with five children.

In Labor Party elections on 9 November 2005 Ben-Eliezer placed third in a vote to determine the party leader. He received 16.82% of the vote which caused the previous leader, Shimon Peres, to narrowly lose the election to Amir Peretz.

In March 2007, Ben-Eliezer was forced to cancel a trip to Egypt after being warned by Egyptian intelligence that he could be arrested, when an Israeli documentary implicated him in the massacre of 250 Egyptian POWs during the Six-Day War.

External links

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer on the Knesset website

• Binyamin Ben-Eliezer Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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