Dan Meridor

Dan Meridor was born in 1947 in Jerusalem

Meridor was born in Jerusalem in 1947. His father, Eliyahu Meridor, was an Irgun leader and later a Herut Knesset member. His mother, Ra'anana Meridor, taught Classics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He joined the IDF in 1965 and served in the armored corps as a tank commander. He then studied law at the Hebrew University and worked as an attorney.

He was Cabinet Secretary from 1982 to 1984 under Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. He entered the Knesset for Likud in 1984 and became Minister of Justice in 1988. In 1996 Benjamin Netanyahu named him Minister of Finance, and he left the cabinet in 1997.

In 1998 he co-founded what became the Center Party and returned to the Knesset with it in 1999. He chaired the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and was a minister without portfolio from 2001 to 2003. He lost his seat in 2003.

He rejoined Likud and returned to the Knesset in 2009, serving as Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy and Deputy Prime Minister until 2013. In 2014 he became president of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations.