Gen. Avraham Tamir Is Born
Members of the Israeli delegation at Camp David, September 1978: (L-R) Aharon Barak, Ezer Weizman, Menachem Begin, Ilan Tehila, Moshe Dayan, Elyakim Rubinstein, Avraham Tamir. Photo: Moshe Milner/GPO

November 9, 1924
Avraham Tamir, a military strategic mastermind who rises to the rank of major general, is born. He is one of the first Israeli officials to meet with the PLO’s Yasser Arafat and shows support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

After serving in the Haganah and the British army in pre-state Palestine, Tamir is an Israel Defense Forces officer from the 1948 War of Independence through the 1982 Lebanon War.
Tamir leads the IDF Staff and Command College. He is close to such political and military figures as Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Rabin and Ezer Weizman. In the late 1970s he pushes to create the National Security Unit under Weizman, then the defense minister. Weizman chooses him to be the first director of the organization. In 1974, Tamir founds the IDF Strategic and Policy Planning Branch.

He is part of the Israeli delegation during the 1978 Camp David summit and negotiates bilateral security agreements between Israel and Egypt. He also contributes to the consideration of Palestinian autonomy in the Camp David Accords.

After retiring from the IDF, Tamir is appointed the director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office and serves as the national security adviser to Prime Minister Shimon Peres. He leads the Foreign Ministry as director-general and serves as a special assistant to President Weizman in 1990.
Tamir dies at age 86 in December 2010 and is buried in the Mount Herzl military cemetery at Givat Shaul.