Tel Aviv, Israel ? Former Israeli President Ezer Weizman, a flying ace who built up the nation’s air force and helped bring about the Jewish state’s first peace treaty with an Arab country, died Sunday. He was 80.

Weizman, who was president from 1993 to 2000, had suffered from respiratory infections in recent months and was repeatedly hospitalized. He died shortly before 8 p.m. Sunday at his home in the northern Israeli resort town of Caesarea, according to a statement by Weizman’s successor, President Moshe Katsav.

His funeral was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.

In three decades in political life, he 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, a political moderate 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.

His last year as president was marred by scandal when he became the target of 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.

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. He turned to politics after retiring from military service.

In 1977, 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.