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Timeline

1924 -- Ezer Weizman is born in Tel Aviv, nephew of Israel's first President Professor Chaim Weizman. The family later moves to Haifa.

Military Service:
1942 -- Weizman joins the Royal Air Force, beginning his military career as a fighter pilot. He was stationed in France and in India
1946 - 1948 -- member of the IZL (pre-state underground organization)
1948 -- after the proclamation of the State, Weizman serves in the "Air Service," the predecessor of the Israel Air Force.
1948 - 1949 -- During the War of Independence, Weizman flies arms and supplies to outposts around the country.
1958 - 1966 -- Weizman spends eight years as commander of the IAF.
1966 - 1969 -- Chief of Operations of the General Staff during
the Six-Day War, and later Deputy Chief of Staff.
1969 -- retires from military service with the rank of major general, and turns to politics.

Public Service:
1969 -- Minister of Transport in the second National Unity government under Levi Eshkol.
1971 - 1972 -- Weizman is the chairman of the Herut party's executive committee for a short time, but resigns over a disagreement with Menachem Begin
1973 -- Weizman returns to the Herut party and remains until 1980.
1977 -- Weizman is elected as a member of the 9th Knesset, during which he serves as the Defense Minister in Menachem Begin's first government. In this capacity until 1980, Weizman plays an important role in the peace process with Egypt.
1980 -- Weizman resigns from the government, formally over military budget cuts, but in fact because of his dissatisfaction with progress in the peace process.
1980 to 1984 -- Weizman takes a break from political life and engages in private business.
1984 -- establishes a new party called "Yahad" which attained three seats in the elections to the 11th Knesset. Yahad becomes part of the Labor Alignment, and Weizman is appointed Minister without Portfolio in the national unity government formed by Shimon Peres.
1985-- Weizman becomes Coordinator for Arab Affairs, and in this capacity, he helps the Arab sector and continues efforts to normalize relations with Egypt.
1986 -- Yahad officially joins the Labor Party.
1988 -- Labor Party joins the national unity government with the Likud, and Weizman is appointed Minister of Science and Technology.
1992 -- National unity government is disbanded. Weizman resigns from the Knesset frustrated with the slow pace of the peace process.

Weizman as President:
March 1993 -- Ezer Weizman elected Israel's seventh president by the Knesset.
State visits: First state visit of an Israeli president to Turkey, India, China; also visited Great Britian, Germany, Czech Republic, South Africa, Egypt, Jordan.
March 1998 -- Ezer Weizman elected to a second presidential term. For the first time, an acting president who ran for a second term was faced by an opponent.
December 1999 - Investigative journalist Yoav Ya'acov breaks story of Weizman-Seroussi gifts. Weizman becomes first president to undergo police investigation.
May 25, 2000 - After Attorney-General publishes report on Weizman, and dogged by public pressure, Weizman says he will resign.
July 10, 2000 - Weizman officially presents his resignation to Knesset Speaker.

Read more about Ezer Weizman
The Weizman legacy - May 24, 2000
Weizman redefines the role - February 14, 1997
President with a fine touch
The Knesset's official website
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs official website
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President Ezer Weizman.
Ariel Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post

The Weizman legacy
By Allison Kaplan Sommer

(January 14) -- Almost from the day that he entered Beit Hanassi, Ezer Weizman made it clear that his presidency was going to be different --
Whether it is sooner rather than later, whether or not he will face criminal charges regarding the gifts he received from businessman Edouard Seroussi, whether his official reason for resignation will be the shadow of the scandal or his fragile health, the feeling that we are watching the beginning of the end of the presidency of Ezer Weizman was undeniable this week.
As Weizman's attorneys gathered documents regarding his transactions with Seroussi and delivered them to State Attorney Edna Arbel, and as Beit Hanassi tried to maintain the appearance of business as usual, it increasingly seemed a question of when, not whether, Weizman would step down.
Even as he put up a brave, soldierly front, traveling the country, and singing "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" with British nuns at an Abu Ghosh convent, Weizman looked frailer than ever. He and his aides were clearly preoccupied by the specter of the revelations of the cash gifts, the calls for his resignation both in the press and from politicians, and the rampant speculation as to who would be his successor.
Also emerging is discussion of the legacy that Weizman's years as president will leave on the country and the institution of the presidency. Political scientists agree that Weizman will be leaving the office in a far different condition than he found it - and some are highly critical, if not outright condemnatory, of the way the presidency has changed during his tenure.
"I think he's destroyed the presidency," declares Hebrew University political scientist Reuven Hazan.
In Hazan's view, the Seroussi scandal is merely the straw that broke the camel's back. The public, he believes, has had enough of Ezer Weizman.
"I don't think that this scandal could bring down a president in Israel, unless that president had already systematically undermined his base of support by alienating one group after another over time, by his behavior.
"He has alienated the Right with his political positions and his supporters on the Left by his behavior. I'm not just talking about this scandal.
"Even those who support his position on every issue on which he has recently voiced an opinion - the peace process, the Golan - are tired of the person himself and think that he should go. And since it seems likely that his replacement will be Shimon Peres, those who support the peace process believe that if Weizman leaves, they will have a president who will keep doing the same thing more nicely and diplomatically."
ALMOST from the day that he entered Beit Hanassi, Weizman made it clear that his presidency was going to be different. He made numerous public statements on political issues and openly criticized both the Rabin and Netanyahu governments' handling of various matters. His blunt style simultaneously won him affection and admiration - and created enemies.

As a result, his reelection in 1998 was more politicized than any previous process of choosing a president, involving much lobbying from the two political camps to win support for Weizman and his challenger, Shaul Amor.
Following that turbulent election, 11 bills were submitted to the Knesset, proposing changes in the way a president is chosen and the length of the term he serves.
"He damaged the functions of the presidency," asserts Hazan. "The president in Israel was always supposed to be above politics. He was supposed to be a unifying factor, neither Right nor Left, religious nor secular, Ashkenazi nor Sephardi.
"He was only supposed to be involved when politicians can't make a crucial decision, but the public is united, such as when the Knesset refused to have an inquiry into the Sabra and Shatilla massacre but the public wanted it, and president Yitzhak Navon stepped in, or when president Chaim Herzog stepped in and pressed electoral reform that brought about the direct election of the prime minister.
"The president was supposed to be someone that Israelis can identify with: the personification of an 'Israeli.' But today, President Weizman is no longer a recipient of this legitimacy and the mandate of a majority of the Israeli public."
Particularly at this juncture, replacing Weizman is necessary, he adds.
"We are about to have crucial and hurtful decisions thrust upon us - like a referendum on the Golan Heights for which our politicians will be ready to rip each other apart to win. The presidency as a unifying factor, a way of keeping Israel and Israelis together, is of utmost importance in these times."
UNDER the current system, the president has little power on a daily basis, but his potential ability to steer the direction of the country is significant.
If the prime minister finds himself in a situation in which he is threatened by a possible no-confidence vote in the Knesset, yet is confident of winning a solid majority in a popular election, he can choose to disband the Knesset and call for new elections. The only possible barrier to such action would be the president, who could refuse to give his approval; the Knesset would stay in session even against the will of the prime minister.
prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig, a Bar-Ilan University political scientist, says that the Weizman experience may spark renewed calls for a reassessment of the office.
"There may be a move to revise the law and make it clearer what a president can or cannot do. That may happen, either formally or informally, and some form of committee is likely to be formed."
Lehman-Wilzig's view of the long-term effect of Weizman's presidency on the status of the office, however, is more forgiving than Hazan's.

"I don't think the institution of the presidency is ruined. We've had seven presidents, and only this one has been touched by scandal.
"And I don't think that the Seroussi affair is something that the Israeli public views as horrendous, especially if it becomes clear that this money was a gift he failed to report properly and not some kind of influence-peddling. I believe that in the historical memory of the public, this will be a passing affair."
HE agrees, as do most observers, that if Weizman resigns under the shadow of this affair, it will be a sadly inappropriate ending to an illustrious career.
"I think that in the case of Ezer Weizman, one has to distinguish between his impact on the office of the presidency and his reputation as a public figure," says Hebrew University professor Yaron Ezrahi, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.
"I think the public by and large had and still has much appreciation for Ezer Weizman the person and his incredible record as a soldier and a public personality, and as one of the rarest and purest embodiments of the Israeli temperament - the air of informality and colloquial language that are characteristic of him.
"Ezer Weizman has been a rare and precious phenomenon. But that same air of straight talk has not been the most congenial to the decorum and the dignity of the office of the presidency.
"This office requires a certain kind of style; it is probably the most official and formal office in Israel. When we took the most informal public personality in Israel since Moshe Dayan and put him in the most official and formal office of the state, it was an automatic prescription for all kinds of shock waves."
Weizman will also leave the legacy of his touching visits to wounded soldiers and bereaved families and an intimate contact with citizens that was rare for a man holding the highest office in the country.
"Given his contributions - he undoubtedly belongs to the group of the most revered soldiers in Israeli history, those who have turned toward peace with our neighbors - Weizman belongs to that critical moment, that turning point in our history," says Ezrahi.
"In the long run, these credentials will eclipse whatever improprieties and violations of cherished public codes may be attributed to him."

Weizman redefines the role
Batsheva Tsur
The Jerusalem Post
Friday, February 14, 1997
When history looks back on Ezer Weizman's term as president, it may well be this week's 'whistle stop' tour of the 73 bereaved families for which he will be most respected and remembered.
By its sheer physical and emotional scope, the journey across the length and breadth of the country to be with the families of the fighters during the week of mourning, was a unique event.
To the difficult task of sharing in grief, Weizman brings a sensitivity born of personal loss - his son, Shauli, who was wounded during the War of Attrition, later died in a car accident - and an example of how it is possible to overcome it.
Unlike most of his predecessors, and in the true tradition of a military man, Weizman has taken pains to visit almost all the IDF casualties in the hospitals and the bereaved families in their homes since assuming office. The alacrity with which he announced his decision to visit the families, on learning of the helicopter disaster, was therefore very much in keeping.
In May 1993, when Weizman assumed the presidency, there were pundits who said that the presidency had started with Weizmann - Chaim, Israel's first president - and would end with Weizman - his nephew, Ezer.
Chaim Weizmann, a renowned scientist, had been the archetype for many of his successors, with the notable exception of Yitzhak Navon - an ivory-tower figure, who mainly met the nation on formal occasions and whose strength lay in putting across Israel's image to the politicians of the world. Weizman the second is perceived as a forthright and charming sabra.
With the adoption of the law for the direct election of prime minister - which relieved the president of the decision on whom to confer the formation of the government - many felt that the presidency had assumed a totally ceremonial nature. Strange then that the man voted in as Israel's seventh president should be a volatile former politician and air-force commander with a reputation for putting his foot in his mouth and with little patience for the niceties of protocol.
And indeed, Weizman soon proved that words were not his strong point. There was his inaugural address in the Knesset which he rattled off like a military Order of the Day, and there was his mundane eulogy for Yitzhak Rabin at the state funeral, a missed historical opportunity.
On a different level, there were his unforgettable remarks about women ('meidele... I don't see men knitting socks,' in the case of a young woman who wanted to be a pilot). There was the furor he succeeded in creating about the gays ('I like men who are men and women who are women').
And at the same time, he was kicking up the dust with remarks to the government. It started most notably with his call on Labor, the party that had voted him in, to 'stop and think' about the peace process after the terrorist bombings a year ago. Many asked if Weizman was returning to his Likud affiliations.
And when the Likud-led government failed to move on the Hebron deal, there again was Weizman, this time reassuming the role of an architect of the Camp David accords.
And when Netanyahu failed to meet Yasser Arafat, it was Weizman who invited the PLO leader to Caesarea. And it was Weizman who succeeded in twisting the prime minister's arm as Netanyahu stood by his side to say the Prime Minister's Office would decide on a date to meet with Arafat.
Two trends were clearly emerging. First, Weizman was putting issues on the agenda and to a large extent he had become a vox populi. With his direct manner and his willingness to leap into any place, conversation or situation, he had become the mouthpiece of the man on the street, making them feel 'one of the boys.'
The presidency was becoming, as he likes to say, 'the one official institution which people get up in the morning and do not hate.'
Secondly, and as a corollary, Weizman appeared to be building up a power base of his own. The presidency began emerging as a kind of check-and-balance with the power of the prime minister, even though the presidential role was divested of executive teeth.

'I am staying in the country,' Weizman declared shortly after taking up office, apparently in reference to the globe-trotting propensity of sixth president Chaim Herzog.

'Since then, Weizman has taken a few trips abroad and these have made a significant economic, and perhaps also diplomatic, impact. But it is on the home field where Weizman has scored his greatest victory - to prove that the post of an Israeli president is still significant.

President with a fine touch
Allan E. Shapiro
The Jerusalem Post
Friday, January 28, 1994
CONGRATULATING Ezer Weizman on his election as president last June, the prime minister remarked that the near future would, in all likelihood, see grave decisions that would seriously divide popular opinion.
The function of the presidency, he continued, was to assure these decisions were accepted and national unity preserved, despite the divisions.
This was probably the first high-level intimation of the beginning of the process that was to lead, a few months later, to the Oslo Declaration of Principles with the PLO.
Replying, Weizman quipped that he had a better idea what he wouldn't be allowed to do as president than what he would be allowed. He well understood, he said, that he couldn't just pick up the phone and call Syrian President Assad, although, he continued to the accompaniment of general laughter, he would be glad to do so, if asked.
This week, at the start of his state visit to Turkey, he came close to doing just that. Speaking at a state dinner, he declared that at the Geneva summit, Hafez Assad had "failed to understand the expectations of the Israeli public." He called on the Syrian president "to make a bold decision and meet Israelis, to get to know our prime minister and foreign minister."
Weizman's allusion to public opinion in Israel should be taken together with his implied acceptance of the idea of a popular referendum on a settlement with Syria. This latter statement was severely criticized by former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir in a TV interview. Shamir claimed that Weizman had exceeded the traditional role of the president by taking a position on a controversial issue. Actually, Weizman has demonstrated a fine sense of discrimination in dealing with sensitive topics. In his appeal to Assad, the subject of the Golan Heights was not even mentioned. His remarks about a referendum did not affirm that it was the only, or even the most desirable, option available.
However, they were both significant expressions of the presidential role in the political arena. Abroad, particularly in Syria, as well as in Egypt, where Weizman enjoys wide respect and even admiration, his statements, taken together, will provide a necessary caveat on the importance of winning popular support in Israel for a settlement on the Golan.
IN THE United States, Weizman's utterances will add credibility to Rabin's reservations about the va summit. There are plenty of key players in the Clinton administration, Warren Christopher among them, who have not forgotten that Weizman accompanied Jimmy Carter on a presidential jet (eating ice cream, as Weizman later explained) during the disastrous 1980 election campaign, while most Israeli politicians supported Ronald Reagan, the successful Republican rival.
At home, Weizman's statements also have political impact. Their effect is, in the strictest sense, legitimation - conferring legitimacy on Assad as a partner for peace, in the one case, and conferring legitimacy on a referendum as an acceptable method of national decision-making, in the other. This conferring of legitimacy is the quintessence of the presidential role. It translates into action Rabin's congratulatory exhortation to Weizman on the importance of the presidency in making divisive decisions acceptable.

Weizman has also performed the presidential role in his visits to settlers in Judea and Samaria. Again, the proper interpretation of his action is legitimation - or, more precisely, the rejection of delegitimation. So too, his statements to Jordan Rift farmers, supporting their right to oppose an interim settlement that would include them within the boundaries of Palestinian autonomy.
Before Weizman's election, there were calls for the abolition of the office of president. The new law for direct election of the prime minister, it was argued, made the presidency an unnecessary, ceremonial position. In fact, perhaps the most significant presidential initiatives have their roots in the broad legal definition of the president as chief of state, rather than in any specific statutory authority.
President Chaim Herzog, for example, faced with a crisis over the breakdown of health services, demanded the appointment of what became the Netanyahu Commission, whose recommendations are the basis for the pending national health law. He also pushed hard for electoral reform. Before him, Yitzhak Navon mobilized the national conscience in his call for an investigation into the massacres in the Beirut refugee camps.
The ultimate extension of presidential initiative would likely occur if all other political forces were stalemated. Given Israel's present parliamentary division, this is a possibility that cannot be ruled out.

EZER WEIZMAN
Ezer Weizman, the seventh president of the State of Israel, was born in 1924 in Tel Aviv. Chaim Weizmann, the first president, was his uncle.
During World War II, Ezer Weizman served in the Royal (British) Air Force and was stationed in France and in India. From 1946 to 1948, he was a member of the IZL (pre-state underground organization). In 1948, after the proclamation of the State, he served in the "Air Service," the predecessor of the Israel Air Force. During the War of Independence, he flew arms and supplies to the Negev and to the besieged Gush Etzion. That same year, Weizman was sent to Czechoslovakia for training to fly the "Messerschmidt" airplane and to fly one back to Israel. He continued to serve in the IAF until 1966, the last eight years as its Commander.
Though Weizman served as IDF Head of Operations and Deputy Chief of Staff in the years 1966-1969, his political background excluded his becoming Chief of Staff. After ending his military service, Weizman served as the Minister of Transport in the second National Unity Government under Levi Eshkol. For a short while, he was the Chairman of the Herut party's executive committee, but resigned in 1972 over a disagreement with Menahem Begin over the distribution of posts in the party leadership. Weizman returned to the Herut party in May 1973 and remained there until 1980. In 1977, he was elected as a member to the 9th Knesset, during which he served as the Defense Minister in Menahem Begin's first government. In this capacity, he played a pivotal role in the peace process with Egypt, and launched the Litani Operation in 1978. In 1978, he proposed the formation of a "National Peace Government" to help further the peace process, but his idea was rejected by Begin.
In May 1980, Weizman resigned from the government, formally over military budget cuts, but in fact because of his dissatisfaction with progress in the peace process. In November of that year, he was dismissed from the Herut party because he considered establishing a new party with Moshe Dayan, who had resigned from the government in the previous year.
From 1980 to 1984, Weizman took a break from political life and engaged in private business. In 1984, he established a new party called "Yahad" which attained three seats in the 1984 elections to the 11th Knesset. Yahad became part of the Labor Alignment, and was appointed Minister without Portfolio in the National Unity Government formed by Shimon Peres. In January 1985, Weizman was appointed Coordinator of Arab Affairs, and in this capacity, he helped the Arab sector and continued in the effort to normalize relations with Egypt.
In 1986, Ezer and his Yahad party officially joined the Israel Labor Party. When the Labor Party joined the National Unity Government with the Likud in 1988, he served as the Minister of Science and Technology. During this time, Yitzhak Shamir threatened to evict Weizman from the government over secret talks he was having with the PLO. Weizman continued in the government until the disbanding of the National Unity Government in 1992. At that time, he decided to distance himself from political life, and resigned from the Knesset.
In 1993, as Labor candidate, he was elected president by the Knesset. He has received much criticism for some of his political statements and his refusal to grant pardons to certain prisoners. Following the Declaration of Principles with the PLO and the lack of progress on peace with Syria, Weizman became more rigid in his political approach to the peace process. However, after the election of Prime Minister Netanyahu in 1996, and a crisis in the peace talks, he began to actively promote the peace process, even going as far as inviting PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to his private home in Caesarea.
Ezer Weizman was elected to a second presidential term in March 1998. For the first time in Israeli history, an acting president who ran for a second term was faced by an opponent (in this case, MK Shaul Amor).

?Copyright 1998, The State of Israel. All Rights Reserved.
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Ezer Weizman
Seventh President of the State of Israel 1993-2000
Ezer Weizman, an air force general, industrialist and politician, was elected Israel's seventh President by the Knesset (Israel's parliament) for a five-year term (commencing 13 May 1993). Born in Tel Aviv in 1924 and raised in Haifa, Weizman is the second president in his family, following in the footsteps of his uncle, Chaim Weizman, the renowned scientist and Zionist leader who was Israel's first President (1949-1952).
Weizman's extensive military career began when he joined Great Britain's Royal Air Force during World War II, serving in Egypt and India. After the war, he served in the Air Service, the predecessor of the Israel Air Force (IAF), and was one of the founders of the IAF when it was formed as an integral part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1949. In 1956 Weizman was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the IAF, and ten years later (1966) he became Head of the IDF Operations Branch and Deputy Chief-of-Staff responsible for the IAF. In this capacity he was the architect of Israel's decisive victory over Egypt's air force during the 1967 Six Day War. He retired from the IDF in 1969 after more than two decades of distinguished service in this country's defense.
Weizman's political career was launched in 1969 with his appointment as Minister of Transport for Gahal (the Likud party's predecessor) in Levi Eshkol's second national unity government. When Gahal left the government a year later, Weizman became Chairman of the Herut party's (a component of Gahal) Executive Committee (1971-72). In 1977 he ran the Likud's victorious election campaign for the Ninth Knesset.
A high point of Weizman's public service came during his tenure as Minister of Defense (1977-80) when he was instrumental in the process leading to the peace treaty with Egypt, fostering close personal relations with Egyptian leaders and playing a pivotal role in the Camp David negotiations. Differences of opinion with the government over ways and means of achieving peace in the region caused Weizman to resign his cabinet post in 1980. He was subsequently ousted from Herut. From 1980 to 1984, he was occupied mainly in business activities.
In 1984 Weizman founded a political party, Yahad, which ran on a dovish platform in the elections to the Eleventh Knesset, gaining three seats. In the national unity government formed after these elections, Weizman served as Minister without Portfolio and as a member of the inner cabinet. In 1985 he was apointed Coordinator of Arab Affairs, a position which enabled him to promote his long-time interest in assisting Israel's Arab sector. In the 1988 elections, he ran Labor's campaign and subsequently became Minister of Science and Development in the new national unity government, serving in this position until March 1990. In February 1992, Weizman resigned from the Knesset over what he regarded as lack of pogress in the Arab-Israeli peace process.
Israel's seventh President brings to the office impressive achievements and wide-ranging personal contacts in the Western, as well as in the Arab world. No stranger to problems and challenges, Weizman draws upon decades of political experience during which he shifted party affiliations to accommodate his changing views, gradually replacing hawkish beliefs with a dovish orientation. On accepting the Presidency, which carries with it responsibility for fostering national unity and promoting moral values, Weizman said he regards the job as "the most complicated and difficult one I have ever assumed."
Ezer Weizman was re-elected to a second term in May 1998, and resigned from the Presidency in July 2000.
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