Yigal Allon

Biography

Yigal Allon was born Yigal Peikowitz in 1918 in Kfar Tavor in the Lower Galilee, the son of pioneer settlers. He studied at the Kadoorie Agricultural High School from 1934 to 1937 and then helped found Kibbutz Ginosar. A member of the Haganah from 1931, he led field units during the 1936-1939 Arab revolt, took part in operations with Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads and was a founding member of the Palmach in 1941, becoming its commander in 1945.

In the 1948 war he directed major operations in the Galilee, the centre and the Negev, and he commanded the troops ordered to shell the Irgun arms ship Altalena in June 1948. In October 1949 David Ben-Gurion replaced him with Moshe Dayan as head of Southern Command, and he left the army in 1950. He then studied philosophy and history at St Antony's College, Oxford, from 1950 to 1952.

Having helped form Mapam in 1948, Allon became a leading figure in Ahdut HaAvoda after it split away, and he sat in the Knesset from 1955 until his death. He was minister of labour from 1961 to 1968 and became deputy prime minister in 1968. After Levi Eshkol died in February 1969 he served as interim prime minister until Golda Meir took office in March. He was then education minister until 1974 and foreign minister from 1974 to 1977. In July 1967 he presented the Allon Plan for a partial withdrawal from the West Bank, which shaped Israeli settlement policy for a decade, and he worked for the merger that created the Labor Party.

Allon died of heart failure in February 1980 while challenging Shimon Peres for the leadership of the Alignment, and he was buried at Ginosar.