MOSHE YAALON

Minister Moshe Yaalon, Vice Premier, Minister of Strategic Affairs, Likud Knesset Member.

Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Yaalon served as the 17th IDF Chief of Staff, from 2002 to 2005.  During this term he led Israel's army’s successful effort to quell the Palestinian terror war launched in September 2000.

Yaalon’s mandatory army service, starting in 1968, was in the Nahal Paratroop Regiment. After serving as a reserve soldier in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Yaalon returned to active duty and completed officers’ training. He held several command positions in the IDF Paratroop Brigade, and was wounded in combat at the end of the 1982 Lebanon War. He climbed the IDF ranks, to serve as the head of the military intelligence, OC central command and was appointed Chief of Staff on July 9, 2002.

From the end of 2005, Yaalon spent nine months in Washington DC as a distinguished military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In 2006-2008 held positions as a distinguished fellow at the Shalem Center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, as chairman of Beit Morasha's Center for Jewish Identity and Culture, and as president of "Shekel", an organization which provides community services for people with disabilities.

He pursued advanced studies at the command and staff college in Camberly, England and holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Haifa.  Born in 1950 in Kiryat Haim, Yaalon is married and has three children.