Yossi Beilin

Yossi Beilin was born in 1948 in Petah Tikva

Beilin was born in 1948 in Petah Tikva and grew up in Tel Aviv. His parents, Tzvi and Zehava Beilin, came from Poland. He studied at the Herzliya Gymnasium.

He served in the IDF signal corps and fought in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. After the 1973 war he left his religious way of life. He earned a doctorate in political science from Tel Aviv University in 1981 and later taught there.

He worked as a journalist at Davar from 1969 and became Labor Party spokesperson in 1977. He was Cabinet Secretary under Shimon Peres and then a director at the Foreign Ministry. He entered the Knesset in 1988.

As Deputy Foreign Minister from 1992 he started the contacts with the Palestinians that led to the Oslo Accords. He later drafted the Beilin-Abu Mazen understandings and served as Justice Minister from 1999 to 2001. In 2003 he signed the Geneva Initiative.

He led Meretz-Yachad from 2004 and retired from politics in 2008. He then founded the consulting firm Beilink and writes opinion columns.