"Over the years, I have met him lots of times. Sometimes they were brief encounters as he left a ministerial meeting, sometimes long conversations in his office. The last was at his Center for Peace in Tel Aviv," writes Patrick Anidjar, former Jerusalem bureau chief, of veteran politician Shimon Peres who died last week.

"From all of them, I remember a man unique in his tenacity, his multiple contradictions and his incorrigible optimism. He didn’t like that word, optimism. 'I prefer hope,' he used to say."