Ezer Weizman (15 June 1924-24 April 2005) was President of Israel from 13 May 1993 to 13 July 2000, succeeding Chaim Herzog and preceding Moshe Katsav. Weizmann, the former Minister of Defense from 1977 to 1980, was an Israeli Labor Party member.
Biography[]
Military career[]
Ezer Weizman was born in Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine on 15 June 1924 to a Jewish family, the nephew of Israel's first president, Chaim Weizman (he would also marry the sister of Moshe Dayan's wife). Weizman joined the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom in 1943 and served in India in 1944 during World War II. From 1944 to 1946, he was a member of Irgun, and he served in the Israeli Air Force during the Arab-Israeli War after attending aviation school in England. From 1958 to 1966, he was the commander of the IAF, and he served as deputy Chief of the General Staff during the Six-Day War. Weizman oversaw the success of the IAF during the Six-Day War, including the destruction of the entire Egyptian Air Force within 3 hours; over 400 enemy planes were destroyed on the first day of the war.
Politics[]
Weizmann as Minister of Defense in 1978
In 1969, Weizman resigned from the military and entered politics as a member of the right-wing Likud party, and he became Minister of Defense under Menachem Begin in 1977. His right-wing views changed after meeting Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, and negotiator Boutros Boutros Ghali, with Sadat referring to Weizman as his "younger brother". In 1980, he was ousted from the Likud party for planning to create a new party with Moshe Dayan, and he joined the social democratic Alignment party. From 1984 to 1990, he was Minister for Arab Affairs and Minister of Science and Technology,
On 24 March 1993, the Knesset elected Weizman as President of Israel, with Weizman representing the new Israeli Labor Party (the successor of the Alignment party). Weizman met with Yasser Arafat at his private home in Caesarea in 1996 and with Nayef Hawatmeh in 1999, and he supported withdrawing from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with the Syrian Arab Republic. In 2000, he was forced to resign over a corruption scandal, as he had allegedly failed to report large sums of money gifted to him by businessmen before he was president. He died of respiratory failure at his home on 24 April 2005 at the age of 80.