Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has died at 96, Israeli media reported on Saturday.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has died at 96, Israeli media reported on Saturday.

The funeral is to take place on Monday in al-Quds (Jerusalem), where he is to be buried alongside his wife who died last July.
Born Yitzhak Jazernicki in Poland in 1915, he moved to Palestine in 1935.

After the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948, Shamir continued his clandestine activities in the Mossad, the Zionist intelligence service, notably serving at the agency's European headquarters in Paris.
Shamir gave up spying in 1965 and entered politics five years later to become speaker of the Knesset after his right-wing Likud party won general elections in 1977.

As head of Likud, which Netanyahu now leads, he served as premier from 1983 to 1984 and from 1986 to 1992.
His term as prime minister was marked by the Palestinian uprising and the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles on Israel.

Shamir repeatedly refused the territorial pullout, and was one of the few deputies to abstain during the 1978 vote to ratify the Zionist entity’s “peace” agreement with Egypt.

In 1999 he left Likud, accusing Netanyahu of betraying his party's ideology by agreeing to limited Palestinian sovereignty over parts of the occupied West Bank.

Shamir always believed the Zionist entity should "stretch from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River."
He had withdrawn from public life since the mid-1990s, silenced by Alzheimer's disease.

Shamir made his final appearance on the international stage at the 1991 Madrid international conference which led to “peace” talks between Tel Aviv and its Arab states.
Following Likud's defeat to Labor in 1992 elections, Shamir retired from political life in 1996.