Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan (1915-1981) was one of Israel's great military leaders and political leaders. He was born on Kibbutz Deganya Alef near the Knessert when Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire.

At the age of 14, he joined the Jewish paramilitary Haganah group, which preceded the Israel Defense Forces, but in 1939 he was arrested, along with 42 other Jews for their Haganah activities and sentenced to 10 years in prison. But after his early release in 1941, Dayan joined a British army unit and lost an eye during fighting with Vichy forces in Syria.

During the 1948 War of Independence, Dayan oversaw the defense of Jewish settlements in the Jordan Valley, and later in the war was appointed commander of the Jerusalem front. Following the war, Dayan participated in the cease-fire talks between Israel and Jordan. From 1953-1958 he served as Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, after which he left the military and in 1959 was elected to the Knesset as a member of the ruling Mapai party.

In 1964, he resigned from the government of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and the following year he was elected to the Knesset as a member of David Ben-Gurion's new Rafi (List of Israeli Workers) Party. Dayan was appointed defense minister just prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, and after Israel's victory became responsible for overseeing territories occupied by the IDF.

But Dayan was severely criticized after Israel was surprised by the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and after the war he resigned as defense minister. In 1977, although he was elected to the Knesset as a member of the Labor Party, Dayan accepted an offer to serve as foreign minister in the government of Menachem Begin.

In that capacity, Dayan played an instrumental role in drawing up the Camp David Accords, the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, but in 1980 he left the government because of a disagreement with Begin concerning the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Dayan formed a new party called Telem and in 1981 was again elected to the Knesset, but he died later that year.