Moshe Sharett

Biography

Moshe Sharett, born Moshe Chertok in Kherson in 1894, moved with his family to Ottoman Palestine in 1906 and grew up in Jaffa and the new town of Tel Aviv. He was in the first graduating class of the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and began studying law at Istanbul University, but the First World War intervened and he served as an interpreter and officer in the Ottoman army.

After the war he worked on Arab affairs and land purchase for the Yishuv's assembly, joined Ahdut HaAvoda and later Mapai, studied at the London School of Economics from 1922, and worked on the labour newspaper Davar from 1925 to 1931. Returning to Palestine, he became secretary of the Jewish Agency's political department and, after the murder of Haim Arlosoroff in 1933, its head, effectively the Yishuv's foreign minister until 1948.

Sharett signed Israel's Declaration of Independence and became its first foreign minister, leading the diplomacy behind the 1949 armistice agreements and Israel's admission to the United Nations. When David Ben-Gurion withdrew in late 1953 he became prime minister, pursuing a policy of restraint toward the Arab states. His government was shaken by the Lavon affair, and Ben-Gurion returned as prime minister in November 1955.

Sharett stayed as foreign minister until June 1956, when he resigned over Ben-Gurion's more aggressive line. In retirement he chaired the Am Oved publishing house, Beit Berl College and the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency. He died in Jerusalem in 1965; his diaries are a major source on early Israeli history.