Begin, Menachem 1913-92
Israeli statesman and Nobel Prize winner

Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk, Poland. He studied law at Warsaw University, and as an active Zionist became head of the Betar Zionist movement in Poland in 1931. On the invasion of Poland in 1939 he fled to Lithuania, where he was arrested by the Russians. He was released in 1941, enlisted in the Free Polish Army, and was sent to British-mandated Palestine in 1942. After being discharged from the army the following year, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Irgun Zvai Leumi resistance group in Israel and gained a reputation as a terrorist.

He founded the right-wing Herut Freedom Movement in 1948, became chairman of the Herut Party, and was a member of the first, second and third Knessets. In 1973 three parties combined to form the Likud Front, a right-of-centre nationalist party with Begin as its leader; in the 1977 elections it ousted the Israel Labour Party and Begin formed a coalition government. He was re-elected Prime Minister in the national elections of 1981.

Throughout his life he was a man of hard-line views concerning the Arabs, but in the late 1970s he sought a peaceful settlement with the Egyptians and attended peace conferences in Jerusalem (1977) and at Camp David (1978) at the invitation of President Jimmy Carter. In 1978 he and President Sadat of Egypt were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for peace. He resigned the premiership in 1983.

Bibliography: S Sofer, Begin (1988); A Perlmutter, The Life and Times of Menachem Begin (1987); E Sliver, Begin (1984).