Uri Avnery ,Journalist, politician and peace activist who called for cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians has died aged 94. He was the publisher of the magazine HaOlam HaZeh. He was also a politician and activist who became one of Israel’s earliest and most articulate advocates of cooperation with the Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state. He began his adult political journey as a member of Irgun, an underground armed Zionist movement fighting the British and Palestine’s indigenous Arabs, but resigned in 1942 in revulsion at its terrorist methods. Later, after several years as a member of the Israeli parliament, he courted major controversy by crossing the front lines in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and meeting Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

In 1993 he founded and headed a Peace Coalition (Gush Shalom) which became the first Israeli organisation to campaign for a boycott of goods produced in the West Bank Jewish settlements. Avnery said every settlement was “a landmine on the road to peace” and “the main reason for setting up settlements is to prevent the two-state solution – the only peace solution there is”.

The son of Hilda and Albert Ostermann, he was born in Beckum, Germany, as Helmut Ostermann, into a prosperous German Jewish family. When Helmut was 11, they emigrated to Palestine, then under British rule. Adolf Hitler had just come to power. Helmut, who became Uri, left school at 14 and worked as a lawyer’s clerk, while becoming a secret member of the Irgun.
He moved into electoral politics in 1965, forming a party also called HaOlam HaZeh and winning a seat in the Knesset. He served for eight years until 1973 and then returned in 1977 for four years as a member of the party known as the Left Camp of Israel (Sheli).

His views aroused fierce opposition and in 1975, after helping to found the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, he was attacked and stabbed. This was as nothing compared to the storm which followed his meeting with Arafat. He was widely denounced as a traitor and his mother, Hilda, disinherited him.After leaving the Knesset, Avnery devoted himself to Gush Shalom and the advocacy for peace that will be his permanent legacy. His final column, headlined Who the Hell Are We?, was a unique one.