The President is among many world leaders who have gathered in Jerusalem.
President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović said on Friday in Jerusalem that Israel would nurture the legacy of former Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres and expressed hope that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would continue, reports Večernji List on September 30, 2016.
“Peres did not led Israel for some time, although he was an interlocutor to many statesmen even after he retired. I believe that Israel will nurture his legacy now that he is gone”, said Grabar-Kitarović after attending Peres’s funeral at the national cemetery on mount Herzl in Jerusalem. “I deeply hope that they will continue the peace process that has come to a halt, but it is not insurmountable, in order to find a solution for two countries, but also for the security of Israel”, said the President in a statement to Croatian journalists.
The funeral brought together representatives from seventy countries, including Croatia, whose delegation included Oscar winner and Holocaust survivor Branko Lustig. “Such a large number of statesmen and dignitaries proves how much people value Israel and Shimon Peres as a statesman”, said the President.
She stressed that all the speeches which put emphasis on Peres as a statesman who was one of founders of modern Israel and had done a lot for the defence and security of the country, also pointed out his other side, which is that he recognized to Palestinians their right to statehood.
Lustig said that he did not believe there would be so many people and so many speakers at the Peres’s funeral. The gathering reminded him of the one held in 2015 in Auschwitz where a huge number of world statesmen also gathered on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
Peres, who was the last surviving political leader from the generation which founded Israel, has been buried between two former prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir.
