Zalman Shoval

Zalman Shoval's family left Danzig for Palestine in 1938. He studied international relations at Berkeley and the Graduate Institute in Geneva, entered the Foreign Ministry, and then moved into banking. He joined the Knesset in 1970 and became a Likud politician. Moshe Dayan brought him back into the ministry to direct foreign information work during the Egyptian peace negotiations. ^{1, 2}

His first Washington term, from 1990 to 1993, involved the Gulf War, Israeli requests for American loan guarantees, and the Madrid peace talks. In his memoir, Shoval recalled advising Yitzhak Shamir against military retaliation for Iraqi missile attacks because it could endanger the coalition against Iraq and Israel's relationship with Washington. He participated in the Madrid conference and subsequent negotiations with Jordanian and Palestinian delegations. ^{3, 2}

Shoval returned as ambassador from 1998 to 2000. In an interview at the start of his second term, he warned that Israeli parties had damaged Jewish communal unity abroad by exporting their domestic political arguments. He sought a central role for the embassy in both the peace process and relations with American Jews. Between and after diplomatic assignments he remained active in banking, public affairs, and the arts, including leadership of the Bank of Jerusalem and the New Israel Opera. ^{4, 2}