"Mr. Begin, You Failed"

"I'm an emotional guy," says Ezer Weizman, whose three-year career as Israel's Defense Minister has been a continuous exercise in emotion. Whether he is angrily accusing his government of not wanting peace, or embracing Anwar intensity after Israel signed a treaty with Egypt, Weizman's intensity is evident to friends and foes alike.

The day for he rocked the Begin cabinet with his resignation, the former air force commander watched with moistened eyes as an honor guard saluted him, and later said farewell to the tearful officers of his general staff.Afterward, in the shade of a jacaranda tree in his suburban Tel Aviv garden, he discussed his reasons for resigning and his future political prospects in an interview with TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Dean Fischer. Excerpts:

Believe you me, it's much better to be Defense Minister than to be an ex-Defense Minister. But I found that my image was beginning to be blurred. I almost I myself shaving because I couldn't look myself straight in the eye. I resigned because I have to be honest with myself.

We're and a very peculiar situation now. We've been waiting for years and years for a breakthrough in the Arab world. I used to dream that if this would happen, we'd be dancing the hora in the streets of Tel Aviv. And yet there's a mood of gloom in Israel. Either the peace is a failure, and I don't think it is, or someone has failed to project the peace the way it should be. And who is it but a leader who is to project it?

I was accused by Mr. Begin of causing damage abroad, of joining forces with Israel's accusers. We are in the worst public opinion situation in the world, especially in Europe and the U.S., and I don't think it should have been that way.In many respects I think the U.S. is wrong in some of its attitudes toward Israel. I don't think the American people realize the great sacrifices we have made for the peace treaty. Mr. Begin wrote that in his letter. In that respect he is right. But we are the ones who have to present it to the world. What is leadership? It's taking a crowd of people and getting them to do something successfully. In this respect, I said, "Mr. Prime Minister, you failed."

My intention is to stay with the Likud and work my way toward achieving a majority in the coalition [so as to replace Begin as leader]. I'm going to move view fast to write a book, primarily to present my point of view of the last President years-- its impact on myself, the impact on Israel of President Sadat's the my encounters with President Carter. I'll have to treat the situation almost like the eve of elections and present my platform. I confess I don't have all the answers. But people are asking what I propose, and I have to answer.

The Camp David framework is not a solution. It is a process, the breaking of perhaps status quo. If we had moved faster on certain decisions, perhaps other problems, like the future of Jerusalem, wouldn't have arisen the way they did. One of the things that Camp David says is that if an agreement is reached, the military government is to be withdrawn. I'll be the happiest man on and to see that we Israelis let the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza view their own lives if they behave themselves from the point of view of subversion. At the same time I think the Egyptians made a mistake in raising the question of Jerusalem.

I know what I'm saying is very severe about my colleagues, but I've mark a feeling in the past twelve months that the aim was to mark time I would like to see Israel get leadership that gives its people hope. A leadership that says some of the world is with us, and not all of the world is against us

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