Born in Poland, he emigrated to Palestine in 1934. Labour Party leader from 1977, Peres became head of a coalition government with the Likud Party in 1984, later serving as deputy to Yitzhak Shamir. As Foreign Minister from 1992 he played a major role in negotiating the PLO–Israeli peace accord (1993) and shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. He replaced Rabin as Prime Minister after the latter’s assassination, only to be narrowly defeated in the elections of 1996 by Binyamin Netanyahu. In 2005 he left the Labour Party to join the new Kadima Party formed by Ariel Sharon. In 2007 he became President, standing down in 2014.