Meeting with Israels 9 th President Mr Shimon

Meeting with Israel’s 9 th President, Mr. Shimon Peres Center for Peace Wednesday, February 10 th 2016 Photos: Yosef Avi Yair Engel (Jucha) From left: Brig. Gen. (Res. ) Baruch Spiegel (ECF), Prof. Alexandre Roulin (University of Lausanne), General (Ret. ) Mansour Abu Rashid (ACPD, Jordan), the Honorable Mr. Shimon Peres, Prof. Yossi Leshem (Tel Aviv University and the SPNI), Yona Bartal (Deputy Director General, Peres Center For Peace)

Mr. Shimon Peres greets Prof. Alexandre Roulin

Mr. Shimon Peres greets Gen. (Res. ) Baruch Spiegel

Mr. Shimon Peres and General (Ret. ) Mansour Abu Rashid

General Mansour, Chairman of the Amman Center for Peace and Development and a key figure in the 1994 Peace Agreement between Jordan and Israel, appropriately sits below a sculpture of ”Shalom” (peace)

Prof. Roulin presents Mr. Shimon Peres with the painting of the Bearded Vulture (“Peres” in Hebrew) flying above the Alps, painted especially for him by the Swiss artist Laurent Willenegger

Yossi Leshem presents Mr. Shimon Peres with two flight feathers from a Bearded Vulture from a Swiss captive breeding program at Zoo La Garenne, a gift from the University of Lausanne Photo: Guy Sali (SPNI)

Mr. Shimon Peres looks at a book about Bearded Vultures received at the Davos event for Mr. Peres from Daniel Hegglin with a dedication from the Swiss Vulture Conservation Foundation Photo: Guy Sali (SPNI)

The book “Der Bartgeier” (The Bearded Vulture) by Klaus Robin, Jürg Paul Müller and Thomas Pachlatko is about the reintroduction of the vultures to the Alps

The Israeli President and the Jordanian General

What an inspiring meeting with the Honorable Mr. Shimon Peres!

The meeting was held at the Peres Center for Peace in Jaffa, on the Mediterranean coast - the delegation from the event at the World Economic Forum at Davos, together with Mr. Shimon Peres

During the meeting Mr. Peres expressed his agreement to support the project to reintroduce the Bearded and Griffon Vultures to the Middle East, following the success of the project in the Swiss Alps and with the vision to see the Bearded Vulture flying free in the Middle East again in the near future A Bearded Vulture soaring over the Alps (Photo: Hansruedi Weyrich)