GENERAL, PROFESSOR, MEMBER OF KNESSET AND FREEDOM FIGHTER
MATTIYAHU (MATTI) PELED
(1923 � 1995)

Many considered him a renegade. Matti Peled, however, was loyal to his country and the cause of peace, which he championed during the last two decades of his life, after a distinguished military career., Born in Haifa, Matti Peled grew up in Jerusalem and was active, like many of the youth of during that period, in one of the socialist Israeli Zionist youth movements. At the age of 18 he joined the Palmach, the Jewish para-military defense organization, founded during the British mandate period in Palestine in the early 1940s, where he served in the Jerusalem platoon together with the late Yitzhak Rabin.

In 1946 Matti commenced Law studies in London, but the war of 1948 brought him
back to the military.

Peled�s military career included studies at the British Staff and Command College, the foundation of the Israel Defense Army Staff and Command College, the post of military governor of Jerusalem District and as a General, he served as chief of the IDF Supply Division. Peled retired from military life in 1969.

His brief service as the military commander of Gaza, during and after the Sinai 1956 military operation, was a crucial turning point in his life. The direct contact with the Palestinians lead him to conclude, that for Jews and Arabs, who share this country, to reach mutual understanding it is paramount to know each others language. It was then, that Matti Peled decided to study Arabic.
His conclusion was not yet founded on any particular political concept.

As the military commander of Jerusalem, Peled participated in the single one project of resettling Palestinian refugees: as they were not permitted to return to their own village, Ein Neqova west of Jerusalem, these Palestinians were allowed to resettle at a nearby location, the current village of Ein Rafa.

During his military service Peled studied Arabic literature, eventually submitting his Ph.D. thesis on the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz at UCLA. Peled was one of the founders of the Arabic Literature department at the Tel Aviv University.

Matti Peled�s political career began within the ranks of the Labor Party. Until his last day, he considered himself a Zionist, irrespective of the biting skepticism voiced by his political opponents. In 1975 Peled was one of the founders of the Israeli Council for Israeli Palestinian Peace, together with Uri Avneri, the late Ya�akov Arnon, Yossi Amitai, Amos Keinan, and others. As the chief coordinator of the Council, Peled coordinated the then illegal meetings with PLO leaders. The first meeting in Paris, in 1976, included the Palestinian Issam Sartawi (murdered in 1983 because of his peace advocacy) and the ex Egyptian Jewish Communist Henri Curi�el (murdered in 1978, for his political activism).

These and other meetings that followed were important building blocks for a long and difficult dialogue between other representatives of the two peoples. However, at that time only few Israeli were prepared to endorse such contacts, which also caused significant political fallout among the Palestinians. Peled also conducted several conversations with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, his Palmach comrade in arms, but the latter refused to support his old friend.

Peled�s first direct involvement in a political party was in 1977 with the foundation of the short- lived Shelly party, whose platform focused on advocating peace negotiations with the Palestinians,. In 1984 Peled was one of the founding members of the Jewish-Palestinian political party The Progressive List for Peace . Together with lawyer Muhammad Mi�ari, Peled served as the party�s representative in the Knesset, where he was considered one of the most serious and industrious parliamentarians.

Peled dedicated his last years to advancing a dialogue of mutual recognition and respect between Israelis and Palestinians, and to research of Arabic literature. Peled was the first Israeli professor of Arabic literature who introduced studies of Palestinian literature in to the academic curriculum.

For his last translation of the Kurdish Salim Barakat�s The Sages of Darkness, Peled won the Translators Association Prize. Peled published numerous political articles in Israeli and international media. He wrote his last political essay a few weeks before his death. �Requiem to Oslo� was the headline of a sad article, expressing disappointment with the Oslo Accords. Seven months later, his friend and leader of the first Israeli-Palestinian official peace initiative, Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by an Israeli fundamentalist.

After his death, his widow Zika Peled contributed Matti�s private library to the Arab teachers college in Beit Berl. His political articles were contributed to the Lavon Institute.

A sad irony of history was to occur two and a half years later, in September 1997, when Matti�s 14-years-old granddaughter Smadar Elhanan was murdered in the center of Jerusalem, by Palestinian suicide bombers.