Old age has hardly slowed him down. If anything, it seems to have handed Peres a measure of the grace that eluded him as a younger man. And at a time when Israel is widely criticised for its ongoing occupation and continued settlement of war-won land, he operates as something of a one-man reminder that the country once aimed - in its 1948 Declaration of Independence - to be a “light unto the nations
“For me, what is important is tomorrow, the next day. What happened until now is over, unchangeable. I’m not going to spend time on it. So I am really living in the future,” said Peres. “I really think that one should devote his energies to make the world better and not to make the past remembered better.”
Peres seemed energetic and spiffy in a dark suit and purple tie as he sat in his office, whose book-lined shelves include three devoted entirely to his own works, in Hebrew and myriad translations. The mention of old age seemed to deeply startle him, as did any notion of retirement or even vacation, which he dismissed as a “waste of time.”
On Tuesday, Peres launches a three-day event called the “President’s Conference” - an annual gathering of artists, thinkers and leaders whose global guest list reflects an extraordinary profile on the world stage: More than any other prominent Israeli politician he seems to largely be forgiven for his country’s extremely messy conflict with the Palestinians.
A politician of astounding longevity - he was a young aide to the country’s founding father David Ben-Gurion at the time of independence in 1948 and a top defence official in the 1950s - Peres has nonetheless been strangely unsuccessful for much of his career. Despite having slipped into the prime minister’s post three times over the years, each tenure was short-lived. He never won an election outright, losing outright four times and tying once, earning a reputation as a grasping manipulator who was also a bit of a schlemiel.
His propensity for aphorism - “You can make omelets out of eggs, but not eggs out of omelets!” - has befuddled many a campaign crowd. And the distinctive cadence, which to this day betrays his Polish roots, is still a mimic’s delight. An unbending belief in peace has been taken by many Israelis as dangerous naivete. And it is ironic as well: Peres was once something of a security hawk, and he is widely credited with engineering, a half century ago, Israel’s status as a nuclear power.