David Levy, a Moroccan-born Israeli who rose from ditch digger to Israel’s political heights, often embodying the resentments of Jews of North Africa and Middle Eastern origin, who felt ill-treated by Europe-rooted elites, died on June 2 at a hospital in Jerusalem. He was 86.

Mr. Levy was Israel’s foreign minister three times in the 1990s and often its deputy prime minister across two decades.

He entered politics, starting in the Israeli labor federation, Histadrut, and then in the right-wing nationalist Herut Party, a core component of what would become Likud. “He swiftly learned how to play the political game,” the New York Times said.

As he told his biographer, “I had to find a road that would lead to the corridors of power.”