This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Yitzhak Shamir (Hebrew: יצחק שמיר, listenⓘ; born Yitzhak Yezernitsky; October 22, 1915 – June 30, 2012) was an Israeli politician and the seventh prime minister of Israel, serving two terms (1983–1984, 1986–1992).

Avraham Stern and Shamir sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and formed the breakaway militia group Lehi.

Shamir reluctantly restarted the Israeli–Palestinian peace process at the behest of the United States and Soviet Union which culminated in the Madrid Conference of 1991.

Yitzhak Yezernitsky was born in the predominantly Jewish village of Ruzhany,[2] Bialystok-Grodno District of Ober Ost, shortly thereafter incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland (now in Belarus), as the son of Perla and Shlomo, owner of a leather factory.

Avraham Stern and Shamir sought an alliance with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and formed the more militant breakaway militia group Lehi.

[13][14] Shamir became the leader of the Stern Gang,[11] and, together with Giladi, Anshell Shpillman and Yehoshua Cohen, reorganized the movement into cells and trained its members.

Moyne had been targeted due to his perceived role as an architect of British restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine, and in particular, the Patria disaster, which was blamed on him.

Shamir claimed his father was killed just outside his birthplace in Ruzhany by villagers who had been his childhood friends after he had escaped from a German train transporting Jews to the death camps,[22] though this was never confirmed.

[25][26] On January 14, 1947, Shamir and four Irgun members escaped the Sembel Prison (a British Detention Camp) through a tunnel they had dug, 200 feet in length, and Mayer Malka of Khartoum subsequently arranged for them to be hidden in an oil truck for three days as it was driven over the border to French Somaliland.

They were re-arrested by the French authorities, but Shamir with Malka's assistance was eventually allowed passage to France and granted political asylum.

[33] News of the killings sparked terror among Palestinians across the country, frightening them to flee their homes in the face of Jewish troop advances and it strengthened the resolve of Arab governments to intervene, which they did five weeks later.

[31] Lehi met fierce resistance from the Labor Zionist establishment in Israel as well as the broader Jewish diaspora for emulating European fascism.

The letter was signed by over twenty prominent Jewish intellectuals, including Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Zellig Harris, and Sidney Hook.

On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants (240 men, women, and children) and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.

But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.

During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community.

[34]After the backlash to the massacre, the Lehi troika of Shamir, Eldad, and Yellin-Mor formally disbanded most of the organization on May 29, 1948 but continued to lead a minority of the membership from Jerusalem.

[35] During a UN-imposed truce, Shamir, Eldad, and Yellin-Mor authorized the assassination of the United Nations representative in the Middle East, Count Folke Bernadotte, who was killed in September 1948, when Lehi gunmen ambushed his motorcade in Jerusalem.

The Israeli provisional government drafted an ordinance for the prevention of terrorism and then invoked it to declare Lehi a terrorist organisation, consequently rounding up 200 of its members for "administrative detention" (prison).

However, Shamir remained reluctant to change the status quo in Israel's relations with its Arab neighbours and blocked Peres's initiative to promote a regional peace conference as agreed in 1987 with King Hussein of Jordan in what has become known as the London Agreement.

Over one million Soviet immigrants would subsequently arrive in Israel, many of whom would have likely gone to the United States had Shamir not pressed the US government to change its policy.

[42] In September 1989, a journalist for the Jerusalem Post asked Shamir, "Doesn't it amaze you that in Poland, where hardly a Jew is left, there should still be a powerful anti-Semitic presence?"

"[46] In a 1996 interview with the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, Shamir said the controversy was based on a misunderstanding of what he said: Once these words were published out of context, I did not find it necessary to straighten them out, because any reasonable person should understand that they should not be read literally.

However, after the United States and the Netherlands deployed Patriot antimissile batteries to protect Israel, and US and British special forces began hunting for Scuds, Shamir responded to American calls for restraint, recalled the jets, and agreed not to retaliate.

One of Shamir's last acts as Prime Minister was to approve the 16 February 1992 assassination of the leader of Hizbullah, Sheikh Abbas al-Musawi.

Shamir went so far as to resign from the Likud in 1998 and endorse Herut, a right-wing splinter movement led by Benny Begin, which later joined the National Union during the 1999 election.

[56] As his body was lying in state Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin laid a wreath on his coffin and said:[57] You're cast stone, Isaac, unbreakable.

"[54] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office issued a statement upon hearing of his death that read: "[Shamir] led Israel with a deep loyalty to the nation.

[58] Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman added that Shamir "contributed greatly to the foundation of the state, which he served his entire life with loyalty and unwavering dedication.

Leader of the Opposition and Labor Party head Shelly Yachimovich offered her condolences to Shamir's family saying that ... he was a determined prime minister who dedicated his life to the state.