Israel’s former president Weizman dies aged 81

JERUSALEM - Ezer Weizman, a World War 2 fighter pilot who helped found the Israeli air force and later served as the country's seventh president, died on Sunday after a long illness, Israeli officials said. He was 81.

Weizman, who built a modern air force that crippled enemy aircraft on the first day of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, later became a dove who helped shape peace with Egypt and the Palestinians.

A nephew of Israel's first president Chaim Weizmann, he was a popular president despite upsetting many with his outspoken views on homosexuals, women and the Bible.

He was forced to resign as president in 2000 after seven years in office, over a police probe into allegations of bribery while he had served as a lawmaker and cabinet minister. Charges were never pressed as the statute of limitations had expired.

His outspoken criticism of other leaders provoked criticism that he was the most overtly political occupant of a post which is supposed to be largely ceremonial.

Known to many as the classic Israeli or "sabra" cactus -- prickly on the outside and soft on the inside -- the sharp-tongued Weizman often became entangled in politics, even doing battle with prime ministers, especially on the issue of peace.

He angered the left by urging Yitzhak Rabin to slow the pace of peacemaking with Palestinians following a wave of suicide bombings in 1994 and 1995 -- and the right by telling Benjamin Netanyahu to resume negotiations when they became deadlocked.

Weizman was born in Tel Aviv in 1924 into a prominent Zionist family in what was then British-ruled Palestine. He served as a fighter pilot for the British in World War 2 and later for the fledgling Jewish state during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Weizman quit the armed forces and joined Golda Meir's coalition cabinet as a member of a minor party in 1969, but resigned in 1970 in protest at Labour's acceptance of UN resolution 242, which called on Israel to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967.

It was a position he would reverse years later.

He was one of the founders of the Likud party in 1973 and in 1977 engineered the stunning victory of right-wing Likud leader Menachem Begin and was rewarded with the defence ministry.

During the 1970s the longtime hawk turned dovish. Two factors changed him -- a friendship with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and the serious wounding of his son Shaul by an Egyptian sniper near the Suez Canal in 1970.

Weizman played a prominent role negotiating both the Camp David peace accords in 1978 and the treaty with Egypt in 1979.

Sadat and US officials made clear they found Weizman easier to deal with than Begin or Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, and his robust pragmatism was vital to hammering out the deals.

Weizman said he felt the same about Sadat from the moment in 1977 when Sadat became the first Arab leader to openly visit Israel.

In May 1980 he quit Begin's government, criticising the slow pace of Palestinian autonomy talks. He returned to politics in 1984 at the head of a tiny dovish party that later merged with the Labour Party of Rabin and Shimon Peres.

In 1989 Weizman caused a government crisis when, as science minister in a unity cabinet, he was accused of having contacts with the then-outlawed Palestine Liberation Organisation.

He never denied the charges and the crisis ended with rightist Likud party Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir reducing Weizman's powers in cabinet. Weizman quit politics in 1992, only to re-emerge in 1993 as Labour's candidate for president.

He died at his home in the Israeli town of Caesaria after battling pneumonia that put him in an intensive care ward for several weeks earlier this year.

A state funeral for Weizman was expected to take place on Tuesday at a cemetery in Or Akiva, near the northern Israeli city of Haifa, officials said.

"He was a legend in his lifetime and will remain so in our memory," said Vice Premier Peres.

- REUTERS