BICOM

Israel’s Prime Minister announced yesterday that the nuclear reactor near Dimona will be named after former President Shimon Peres, who died two weeks ago.

Speaking at yesterday’s cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “I would like to also update the members of the government that it is my intention to name the atomic research facility in Dimona after Shimon Peres.”

He added: “Shimon Peres worked greatly to establish this important enterprise, an enterprise which is important to the security of Israel for generations, and I think that it would be right and proper to rename the centre after him.”

Following Peres’s death, Ze’ev Snir, head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission issued a rare statement. He paid tribute to Peres’s “substantive contribution” to the establishment of the reactor near Dimona, until now known officially as the Negev Nuclear Research Centre. He also praised Peres’s work in the “founding of Israel’s nuclear policy as a significant plank in ensuring the national strength of the country”.

Transport Minister Yisrael Katz suggested last week that the Ayalon Highway, which is the major thoroughfare through Tel Aviv, could also be renamed in Peres’s honour.

Peres played a key role in the establishment of Israel’s military industries in the 1950s. It is thought that he also worked secretively alongside France to establish the Dimona facility, which became active in the early 1960s. Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity and neither confirms nor denies the existence of nuclear weapons.

Peres is considered to be one of Israel’s most distinguished statesmen. In addition to serving as President from 2007 until 2014, he was Prime Minister on two occasions and a member of 12 cabinets. He was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize having played a major role as foreign minister alongside then Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in forging the Oslo Peace Accords with the Palestinians in the early 1990s.