Gad Yaacobi

Yaacobi was born in 1935 in Kfar Vitkin, a moshav in what was then Mandatory Palestine, and attended high school there.[1] After completing his IDF service from 1953 to 1956, he studied economics and political science at Tel Aviv University and earned a Master of Arts in economics in 1959.[1] He continued his education in subsequent years at Harvard University, where he attended an international seminar in 1967 led by Henry Kissinger, and also studied at the University of London.[1][2]

His early professional life connected him directly to the Labor movement's institutions. He worked as an assistant to Agriculture Minister Moshe Dayan from 1960 to 1961 and then headed the Agriculture Ministry's Agricultural Planning and Development Center from 1961 to 1966.[1] During this period he was one of the founders of the Rafi Party in 1965, and from 1966 to 1969 served on the Histadrut Central Committee and the Hevrat HaOvdim Executive.[1] He joined the Labor Party Bureau in 1968.[1]

Yaacobi was first elected to the Knesset in 1969 and served six terms, totaling twenty-three years as a member.[3] His initial ministerial experience came under Prime Minister Golda Meir, who appointed him deputy minister of transportation, a post he held from 1969 to 1974. Yitzhak Rabin appointed him minister of transportation in 1974, and he served until 1977.[1]

During the years of Labor's opposition from 1977 to 1984, he chaired the Knesset Economics Committee and the Labor Party's Socioeconomic Committee, and taught political science at Haifa University from 1980 to 1982.[1]

When the National Unity Government was formed in 1984, Yaacobi became minister of economics and inter-ministerial coordination, a portfolio he later renamed the Ministry of Economic Planning.[1] In that role he organized a task force with Jewish businesspeople from abroad to encourage investment in Israel.[1] He also chaired a joint Labor–Likud committee on electoral reform that proposed a mixed system under which half the Knesset would be elected in multi-member constituencies and the other half by proportional representation; the Labor Central Committee approved the proposal, but the Likud Central Committee rejected it, and the plan was abandoned.[1]

After Amnon Rubinstein resigned from the Ministry of Communications, Yaacobi was appointed to that post in 1987 and served until March 1990, when the Labor Party left the National Unity Government.[1]

After failing to win election to the Thirteenth Knesset, Yaacobi was appointed Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and served from 1992 to 1996.[1][4] In a January 1994 Foreign Ministry publication, Yaacobi wrote that he had taken up the post in October 1992 and set four goals: changing the UN's stance toward Israel, maximizing cooperation, increasing Israeli participation in UN activities, and normalizing Israel's relations with both the UN executive branch and member states.[5]

He identified the General Assembly's repeal of Resolution 3379 — which had equated Zionism with racism — on December 16, 1991, following the Madrid Peace Conference, as an early major sign of improved relations.[5] By his account, the 48th General Assembly marked a turning point: of approximately thirty negative resolutions raised annually against Israel, twenty-one were either not introduced, not brought to a vote, or modified in tone to remove criticism or condemnation, and voting patterns shifted in Israel's favor in many cases.[5]

Yaacobi reported that the number of states maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel rose from 95 in 1990 to 138 in 1994, of which 133 were UN member states out of a UN membership of 184.[5] He credited the agreement with the PLO with helping establish relations with twelve additional states, seven of them at the UN.[5] Concrete institutional gains in this period included Israel's acceptance by consensus to the UN Committee on Information — described as the first time Israel had been appointed to a permanent UN committee — and the election of former Justice Ministry director Mayer Gabay to the UN Administrative Tribunal, which Yaacobi characterized as the first election of an Israeli to a UN body since the early 1960s.[5]

He also pointed to improved working relations with UN peacekeeping forces in the region, UNIFIL and UNDOF, and noted that coordination with UN agencies operating in Israel and the territories — including UNRWA, UNDP, and UNICEF — had improved.[5] Total agency investment in the territories was expected to grow from $300 million in 1993 to nearly $450 million in 1994, with UNDP's allotment rising from $18 million to $40 million.[5] On the diplomatic and social level, Yaacobi hosted a dinner for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin attended by the UN secretary-general and ambassadors of Security Council members with which Israel maintained relations, and more than one hundred ambassadors and foreign ministers attended a reception for Shimon Peres at UN headquarters.[5]

Nonetheless, Yaacobi acknowledged that progress was incomplete. He listed unresolved aims including Israel joining a regional group at the UN — noting that the Asian group was its natural home but that political realities made this impossible at the time — and increasing Israeli representation in UN bodies, expanding peacekeeping participation, and changing further resolutions to reflect the new Middle East reality.[5] He wrote that the UN was "not an inherently hostile organization with regard to Israel," but a forum in which Israel should participate as a full and equal member.[5]

During his UN tenure Yaacobi also pursued contacts with Pakistan's representatives. In 1992, after receiving Foreign Ministry authorization, the Israeli delegation voted in favor of Pakistan's election to the UN Security Council, opening a channel with Pakistan's UN ambassador, Jamshi Merkar.[6] On March 17, 1993, Yaacobi arranged a meeting between Merkar and Prime Minister Rabin, at which Merkar indicated that progress toward Israeli-Pakistani diplomatic relations would require concrete advances in the Middle East peace process.[6] On November 2, 1995, Yaacobi met Pakistan's new UN ambassador, Ahmad Kamal, briefed him on Israel's relations with various Islamic countries, and suggested Pakistan follow a similar path; Kamal said a change in his government's position depended on developments in the Middle East and Pakistani public opinion.[6]

After completing his UN assignment, Yaacobi chaired the Israel Electric Corporation board until 1998 and the Ports and Railways Authority from 2000 to 2003.[1] He began teaching political science at Tel Aviv University in 1998 and from 2003 taught at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.[1]

Yaacobi's published output spanned several genres. His academic and political writing included The Government of Israel (New York: Praeger, 1982), a 329-page volume with bibliographical references and indexes cataloged by the National Library of Israel, and a Hebrew-language autobiography published in 2002.[7][1] He also wrote New York Diary: The Story of Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, published in 1997, along with other books on politics and society including works listed under the titles "The Power of Quality," "The Freedom to Choose," "A Directional Reading," "The Future Begins Now," and "The Burden of the Day."[8][3]

His literary work began receiving public attention in 1982, when his first poem, "Against the White Mountains" (מול ההרים הלבנים), appeared in print.[9] Subsequent poems were published in literary journals including Siman Kri'a, Ma'aznayim, and Iton 77, and his first poetry collection was titled "The Grace of Time" (חסד הזמן).[9] He told a 2002 Globes profile that he wrote every day while serving as a government minister and as ambassador, and that for a man from a moshav, writing might be perceived as "an expression of weakness, oversensitivity."[9] He also wrote three children's books.[1] The National Library of Israel preserves an ethnographic audio recording of a public performance on which Yaacobi is listed as a performer.[10]

In a 1974 letter on relations between Israeli youth and Jews in the Diaspora, Yaacobi articulated a vision of Israel as simultaneously "a society of quality," "a Jewish state," and "a growing state able to absorb additional Jewish people," describing aliyah as a principal national goal.[11]

Yaacobi died in 2007 at the age of seventy-two.[2] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was among those who paid tribute, acknowledging his contributions as a legislator, minister, diplomat, and writer.[2] Tel Aviv University's Department of Political Science established scholarships in his memory for top students, alongside a memorial poetry contest and awards ceremony.[12]