Yitzhak Pundak

Yitzhak Pundak was born in 1913 in Kraków

Yitzhak Pundak was born in Poland in 1913. He immigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1933 and joined the Haganah that same year.

In the War of Independence he commanded the 53rd Battalion of the Givati Brigade and led the defense of Nitzanim. From August 1948 he commanded the Oded Brigade in Operation Yoav and Operation Hiram. He later became the first commander of the Nahal and, in 1953, the first head of the Armored Corps.

In 1956 he completed a master's degree in business administration at Columbia University. From 1962 he ran the Arad region and in 1965 became the first head of its local council. He then served as ambassador to Tanzania, and later to Guatemala and El Salvador.

In 1971 Defense Minister Moshe Dayan returned him to the IDF as governor of the Gaza Strip and northern Sinai. He clashed with Southern Command chief Ariel Sharon over policy in Gaza. He later headed a Jewish Agency mission in Argentina.

He supported a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. He published memoirs in 2000 and 2005, and in 2013 he received the rank of Major General. He died in 2017.