Menachem Begin ( 1913 - 1992) was the 6th
Prime Minister of Israel .
He negotiated the Camp David Accords with
Egpytian president Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat, for which they jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978.
Begin was born in Russia and since 1939 he was the leader of the Zionist Betar organisation.
In 1941 he joined the Polish army of Anders.
in 1942 he joined the Etzel organization and in 1947 became its leader.
He was responsible for the bombing of Jerusalem''s King David Hotel that killed more than 70 people.
After the founding of the state of Israel, Begin founded the Herut political party .Later on he became the leader of the dominant party- Likud .
In 1979,as the
prime minister of Israel, Begin signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty with Anwar Al-Sadat.
Under the terms of the treaty, Israel handed over the Sinai peninsula to Egypt.
This involved the demolishing of all Israeli settlements in the area (including the town of Yamit).
Begin faced a strong internal opposition to this move, which led to a split in his own Likud party.
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, citing the need to put the PLO out of rocket range of Israel''s northern border.
This began Peace for Galilee Operation .
Begin himself retired in August 1983, deeply disappointed and depressed by the war, his spouse''s death and his own illness. He died in Jerusalem in 1992.