JERUSALEM — Hosni Mubarak realizes he must step down and is looking for an honorable way out, a former Israeli Cabinet minister who has long known Egypt's embattled leader said Friday.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer of Israel's Labor Party, a former Israeli defense minister, said he spoke with Mubarak just hours before the Egyptian president's speech late Thursday in which he transferred some authorities to his deputy but refused to step down.
Describing his conversation with Mubarak to Israel's Army Radio, Ben-Eliezer said: "He knew that this was it, that this was the end of the road."
Another Israeli official, Natan Sharansky, sounded a note of optimism about events in Egypt. Israel was wrong to depend on a dictator to keep the peace and must encourage democracy, said Sharansky, who handles ties with Diaspora Jewry as head of the Jewish Agency.
"This is the moment for those Israelis who believe that peace has to be built bottom-up," he told the daily Jerusalem Post in an interview published Friday. "This is a great moment. Let's try to use it."