Ex-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, a former soldier, spy and statesman, has died at the age of 96, Israeli officials said on Saturday.
"Yitzhak Shamir has left us," current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
As head of the right-wing Likud bloc, which Netanyahu now leads, he served as premier from 1983 to 1984 and from 1986 to 1992. Shamir had withdrawn from public life over the past decade, silenced by Alzheimer's disease.