JERUSALEM — Hosni Mubarak realizes he must step down and is looking for an honorable way out, a former Israeli defense minister who has long known Egypt’s embattled leader said today.

Binyamin Ben-Eliezer of Israel’s Labor Party 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, Ben-Eliezer said: “He knew that this was it, that this was the end of the road.”

“He was looking for only one thing — give me an honorable way out. Let me leave in an honorable fashion,” Ben-Eliezer told Israel’s Army Radio.