Large parts of Jerusalem shuttered amid ‘unprecedented’ security measures as dignitaries from 70 nations gather to pay their respects
Shimon Peres, Israel’s ninth president and the last of its founding fathers, will be buried Friday morning in the Leaders of the Nation section at the Mount Herzl national cemetery in Jerusalem.
Dozens of world leaders are arriving in Israel in the hours preceding the funeral to pay their last respects to the Jewish state’s most prominent statesman.
Peres’s passing early Wednesday after a severe stroke two weeks earlier sparked an outpouring of condolences and expressions of admiration from around the world, with heads of state, religious leaders and even a handful of senior Arab officials praising his six-decade career as a nation builder, defense planner, politician and, at the end, peacemaker who came to embody for many the optimistic outlook of an innovative and confident Israel.
But Peres was also a controversial figure for much of his political career. He is vilified by some on the Israeli right as the architect of failed peace plans that ended in bloodshed, and by many in the Arab world as a guiding force behind Israel’s purported nuclear arsenal and military prowess. His 48 consecutive years in the Knesset, the longest stretch of any politician in Israel’s history, left him with as many domestic political enemies as allies.
But this history was overshadowed Friday by the Peres known to the rest of the world, the Israeli leader who articulated best the hopes that underpinned the peace talks of the 1990s and who became a unifying figure for most Israelis during his term as president from 2007 to 2014.
It was this Peres whose death brought to Israel this week the presidents of the United States, France, Germany, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland and Ukraine, the prime ministers of Canada, Holland, Italy, Sweden and Finland, the governor-general of Australia, the King of Spain, the Prince of Wales, the president of the European Council, and countless others.
US President Barack Obama alone leads a delegation of 33 officials, including 18 members of Congress, Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and a host of top officials.
Many retired leaders, including former US president Bill Clinton, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy and former British prime ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron have also come to Jerusalem for the funeral, as have cabinet ministers from China and India, Brazil and the Vatican.
Despite political opposition at home, the deputy prime minister of Jordan and the foreign minister of Egypt will also pay their respects at the funeral.
Unconfirmed reports Friday even suggested representatives from Arab states such as Bahrain, which lacks diplomatic relations with Israel, have arrived to accompany Peres on his final journey.
Closures
The “unprecedented” precautions put in place to secure so many dignitaries and heads of state have all but shuttered the capital’s western approaches.
The main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, Route 1, will be hermetically sealed to all traffic in both directions from 7:30 a.m. until 9 a.m., then again from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m., the times when many world leaders, including Obama, are expected to land at Ben Gurion Airport and make their way to the capital.
Within Jerusalem, too, roads around the Knesset are closed to non-official traffic, and all avenues leading to and from Mount Herzl, on the city’s western edge, will be closed from 6:30 a.m. until at least 2 p.m. The city’s light rail will operate on a shortened route that will avoid the closed-off parts of the city.
The Jerusalem Municipality announced late Thursday that all special education classes and programs, which require a municipal busing service to transports pupils to programs outside their neighborhoods, will be closed Friday.
The closure of Route 1 is also expected to cause traffic jams on alternative roads, including highways 6, 38, 431 and 443. Police are calling on residents to avoid driving to the capital if they can help it.
Eulogies
Friday’s ceremonies will begin at 8:30 a.m., when a procession will follow Peres’s body from the Knesset, where it lay in state Thursday and was visited by some 50,000 Israelis, toward the national cemetery on Mount Herzl.
The state funeral will begin at 9:00 a.m., with Peres’s ten eulogizers delivering their remarks to a crowd of some 5,000, including family members, foreign delegations from some 70 countries and representatives of all branches of Israel’s government and security services. The eulogies will be delivered in a clearing alongside the tomb of Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl.
While the proceedings will be broadcast live online and on Israel’s main television channels, the events are closed to the public for security reasons.
The first eulogies will come from Israel’s leaders, President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein. They will be followed by former US president and longtime friend and confidant Bill Clinton.
After Clinton, the singer David D’Or, especially loved by Peres, will sing a rendition of the “Avinu malkeinu” (“Our father, our king”) prayer, followed by the eulogy of another old friend, the acclaimed author Amos Oz.
Peres’s three children, Yoni and Chemi Peres and Tsvia Walden, will then offer their eulogies.
The final eulogy will be delivered by US President Barack Obama.
At approximately 11:15 a.m., a much smaller group of some 500, led by Peres’s family, will accompany the coffin as it is carried to his plot and lowered into the grave.
After the interment, ceremonial wreaths will be laid on the grave by a long list of public institutions and security chiefs, including a wreath from the Peres Center for Peace, an institution he founded to further coexistence between Arabs and Jews.
The laying of the final wreath, marking the conclusion of the ceremony, will be placed by Peres’s family.
As reported by The Times of Israel