Begin, Menachem

Israeli politician. He was leader of the extremist Irgun Zvai Leumi organization in Palestine from 1942 and prime minister of Israel 1977–83, as head of the right-wing Likud party. Following strong encouragement from US president Jimmy Carter, he entered into negotiations with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, which resulted in the Camp David Agreements. He shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978 with Anwar Sadat for their efforts towards the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979. In 1981 Begin won a new term of office but his health was failing. The death of his wife in 1982 was a grave blow, resulting in his retirement in September 1983. For the rest of his life he was a virtual recluse.

Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russia (now Brest, in Belarus), studied law in Warsaw, and fled to the USSR in 1939. As leader of the Irgun group, he was responsible in 1946 for a bomb attack at the King David Hotel, Jerusalem, which killed over 100 people.