Zalman Shoval

Zalman Shoval (Hebrew: זלמן שובל, born 28 April 1930) is an Israeli banker, politician and diplomat.

He was the Israeli ambassador to the United States in the years 1990–1993 and 1998–2000, and an active member of the Knesset in the Rafi-State List, and the Likud party.

Between 1955 and 1957 he was a cadet in the Ministry Foreign Affairs, after which he became involved in finance, twice serving as chairman of the Bankers Association Council.

In January 1981 Shoval and two other Likud MKs (Yigal Hurvitz and Yitzhak Peretz) broke away from the party to form Telem with Moshe Dayan.

During his first tenure as Israel's Ambassador he had been closely involved in matters relating to the Gulf War and its aftermath and later participated in the Madrid peace conference (1991), and after that he was a member of the Israeli team negotiating with the Jordanians and Palestinians.

Shoval, together with a number of friends, in 1977 founded the "Moshe Dayan Public Forum for Political and Social Questions", a non-partisan public affairs society, and in 1983 he was among the founders of the "Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies" at Tel Aviv University, and is a member of its board of trustees.

In December 1997, he was unanimously elected President of the "World Likud", a post from which he resigned upon assuming the position of Israel's Ambassador to Washington.