Ezer Weizman, the former Israeli president who as a flying ace built up the nation’s air force and helped bring about the Jewish state’s first peace treaty with an Arab country, died yesterday. He was 80.

Weizman, who was president from 1993 to 2000, suffered from respiratory infections in recent months and was repeatedly hospitalized. He died at his home in the northern Israeli resort town of Caesarea with his family by his bedside. A funeral was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.

In three decades of political life, Weizman made a highly public transition from hawk to dove, saying the Jews had to learn to “share this part of the world” with the Arabs.

As defense minister in 1979, he was instrumental in negotiating Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt.

Weizman, who pioneered contacts with Palestinian leaders, later resigned from then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s cabinet, complaining about his strict interpretation of interim peace accords with Egypt. Ariel Sharon, now Israel’s premier, replaced Weizman as defense minister.

Weizman’s casual style breathed life into the presidency, a largely ceremonial office, and endeared him to the Israeli public. His vacillation on issues of peace reflected the uncertainty of ordinary Israelis – he was dovish when they favored territorial concessions and called for a slowdown when they feared things were moving too fast.

His bluntness and sharp tongue often got him into trouble with other politicians, who accused him of overstepping his authority.

Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, a one-time political ally, said, “In war, he showed incredible bravery, and when peace appeared on the horizon, he enlisted for it.”

Weizman’s last year as president was marred by scandal when he became the target of a police investigation into fraud and breach of public trust.

Weizman was born in the northern port city of Haifa on June 15, 1924. His uncle, Chaim Weizmann, was Israel’s first president. He learned to fly at 16, and in World War II, underwent flight training in the British army, later serving as a fighter pilot in Egypt and India.

Returning to Palestine in 1946, he became one of the Israeli army’s first pilots and undertook daring missions in the 1948 War of Independence.

He was sent to study at the Royal Air Force staff college in England in 1951, and was appointed commander of the Israeli air force in 1958.

In 1969, he retired from the military and joined the nationalist Herut Party. He was appointed minister of transportation in the coalition government of Golda Meir but lost his job when Herut, which later became the Likud Bloc, walked out of the cabinet in 1970.

In 1977, Weizman headed the election campaign that launched the right-wing Begin to power after the 29-year reign of the rival Labor Party.

On December 20 of that year, Weizman made a secret trip to Egypt. That trip – and the friendship he formed with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat – served as a catalyst to the negotiations that culminated in the U.S.-sponsored Camp David agreements between Israel and Egypt in 1978.

That same year, he resigned abruptly from Begin’s cabinet because he failed to win government approval for a plan to grant Palestinians autonomy in the occupied West Bank – one of the major points of the Camp David accords.

Weizman believed in the need to expand the peace with Egypt to include Jordan and Israel’s other neighbors. It constituted a pillar of his platform when he returned to politics in the 1984 elections at the head of the centrist “Yahad” (Together) Party.

He won only two seats in the 120-member Parliament and joined forces with Prime Minister Peres’s Labor Party. Weizman said he decided to switch allegiance to Labor because the Likud had failed to follow up the peace process.

After the Palestinian uprising began in 1987, Weizman broke party line and advocated negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization, then outlawed in Israel as a terrorist organization, and its leader, Yasser Arafat.

Weizman, who served as minister for Arab affairs and later as minister of science and technology, was forced out of the decision-making “inner cabinet” in 1990 for reported contacts with the PLO.

Israeli peace crusaders were delighted when the Knesset elected Weizman as president in 1993. But when Israel signed a peace accord with the PLO later that year, Weizman complained that it was done in haste. After a series of deadly suicide bombs by Islamic militants, Weizman defied the Labor government line by calling for the suspension of peace talks.

In 1997, he raised a diplomatic uproar by reportedly urging then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to “bash together the heads” of Benjamin Netanyahu and Arafat to end a prolonged crisis in peace talks. A year later, he was elected to a second term.

When Israel and Syria held peace talks in the winter of 1999-2000 under Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Weizman threatened to resign if Israelis voted against returning the Golan Heights to Syria in a national referendum, prompting accusations by hard-liners that he was undermining the impartiality of his office.

“It’s very difficult to be the president of the entire nation,” Weizman said at the time, “unless you’re willing to be deaf, mute, and preferably, blind.”

During his last year in office, his glee was dampened by a police investigation into his acceptance of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from a French millionaire friend. Police recommended he not be indicted, but only because the statute of limitations had run out on charges of fraud and breach of public trust.

With his clipped Sabra accent and vernacular speech, Weizman was the first Israeli-born president who also sounded like one. But his temper often got him into trouble. He once referred to Mr. Netanyahu and former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir as “squareheads on the borderline of fascist.”