Zalman Shoval

Zalman Shoval was born in 1930 in Gdańsk

Shoval was born in 1930 in the Free City of Danzig to a Jewish family of Eastern European origin. His father was born in Latvia. The family immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1938.

He attended the Ben-Yehuda School and the Geula high school in Tel Aviv. He then earned a BA at UC Berkeley and an MA in Geneva.

He served as an IDF intelligence officer and was a liaison to the British and French militaries during the Suez Crisis. He later did reserve duty in intelligence and in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.

After working as a Foreign Ministry cadet from 1955 to 1957, he entered finance. He followed David Ben-Gurion to Rafi and the State List and entered the Knesset in 1970, later serving for the Likud and helping found Telem. He handled information under Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, including at the 1978 Camp David Conference.

He resigned from the Knesset in 1990 to become ambassador in Washington, serving until 1993 and again from 1998 to 2000. He took part in the Madrid peace conference and the Wye River Conference. In 2009 he was asked to head a forum on U.S.-Israel relations.