Shimon Peres, one of Israel’s defining political figures, has been described by his doctors as “fighting for his life”, two weeks after he suffered a massive stroke.

The condition of Peres, 93, who twice served as prime minister of Israel and later as the country’s ninth president, was said to have worsened seriously in the course of a few hours on Tuesday as family members gathered at his bedside.

“The president is fighting for his life,” medical sources said. “His health position is very, very difficult. His doctors are worried about his health.”



Peres’s son-in-law and deputy director-general of the hospital treating him, Rafi Walden, added that “his condition is extremely serious”.

Peres was rushed to hospital near Tel Aviv on 13 September after he reported feeling ill. Following tests he was diagnosed to have suffered a stroke and was placed in a medically induced coma.

His defining achievement was as one of the key architects of the Oslo peace accords for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

The last surviving political figure associated with the founding of modern Israel, Peres’s life story tracked many of the most important moments in the country’s short history, and saw him move from being a hawk to a key peacemaker – a legacy that in recent years has substantially unravelled, to his dismay.

For a long time Peres was deeply divisive in Israeli politics, but he went on to become one of the country’s most popular public figures, serving a seven-year term as the president, which he completed two years ago.

“In his people’s eyes he ceased to be a politician. He became an historic figure, larger than politics, larger than everyday affairs, a figure in a league of his own,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, shortly after Peres was taken ill in one among many retrospectives of his long career.