Word: weizman
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Politically, Weizman is in the midst of what amounts to a second coming. In the late 1960s he quit soldiering to take a post in Golda Meir's government as Minister of Transport, but soon left to go into the shipping and electronics business. After a few months of unwonted silence in his new job as Defense Minister, Weizman began falling into his old hip-shooting ways. When he was asked, during the first delicate days of talks with Egypt, about reports of new Israeli settlements in the Sinai, he answered: "What do you want? I am only responsible...
...Weizman and Begin had clashed before. In 1972, only three years after joining the Herut Party, Weizman challenged Begin for the leadership. He lost, but Begin has never forgotten the attempt to unseat him. "I respect him," Weizman wrote of Begin in his 1975 memoirs, On Eagles' Wings. "But we are poles apart in our characters, our viewpoints and our personal traits. There was the friction you get between men who lack a 'chemical affinity.' " Today he puts his relationship with Begin a little differently. He is simply trying to help Begin "navigate the ship of state...
...Lebanon strike reflected a Weizman maxim. "Israel," he has remarked, "is condemned to fight from time to time. She has to plan her wars more carefully than any other country and achieve all her targets in a very short time." In closed meetings, he has added that "Israel under Begin's rule and myself at the defense desk will not absorb the first strike but will take the pre-emptive strike...
...Weizman believes Israel's well-advertised readiness to strike first and hard when it felt threatened was "among many secret motives" for Anwar Sadat's November visit to Jerusalem. Weizman and Sadat have similar family tragedies: Sadat's brother Atef was killed in the 1973 October War; and Weizman's son Shaul, now 26, a former paratrooper, suffered head injuries from a sniper's bullet while stationed in one of the Bar-Lev fortresses...
...Weizman believes that Israel cannot survive forever in a war situation with its neighbors. In the past he has expressed dismay at the stalling of the peace momentum, and he and other top Israelis may be beginning to have doubts on that score about the wisdom of the Lebanon invasion. A top Israeli official told TIME last week: "Like generals before him, Weizman has learned that you can know how to start a war, but you never know how it will...