Israel President Calls on Rabin to Widen Coalition : Politics: Ezer Weizman also appeals to opposition parties to join government and help shape peace accord. He expresses anguish over divisions.

Israeli President Ezer Weizman, worried by the diminishing public support for his country’s peace agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, called on Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Tuesday to broaden his coalition government and preserve national unity.

Weizman, expressing anguish over the sharpening divisions among Israelis, appealed to right-wing and religious opposition parties to join the government and accept the peace accord--perhaps reshaping it by participating in the crucial negotiations on its implementation.

“We are in a difficult situation, a situation of deep distress,” Weizman said, referring to the attacks that have left 18 Israelis dead in the three months since the agreement on Palestinian self-government was concluded, and to the resulting backlash against the pact. “We have to admit to ourselves that the situation is worse than when the agreement was signed.”

As a renowned dove and in so boldly departing from his largely ceremonial role as president, Weizman challenged Rabin even more dramatically than the right wing has. He rebuked the prime minister for his political insensitivity and warned him that by dividing the nation he was jeopardizing the peace he has sought.

“Most citizens of Israel don’t know exactly what is going on,” Weizman said, making his appeal in a live interview at the start of the evening television news program. “. . . We must have a broader-based government. The people are in confusion, and large numbers are in despair. If there is no chance for national unity, then there is no chance for the larger objective of peace.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, chairman of the Likud Party, and most other opposition leaders rejected Weizman’s call, as did Rabin’s Labor Party and other members of the present coalition.

“Likud should not help a government that is heading down the path of disaster,” Netanyahu told a Likud meeting.

After meeting with Weizman, Rabin said any party joining the government would have to accept its present program. “No one has turned to me, and I am not turning to anyone, and I suggest we leave the speculation on this issue alone,” Rabin said, stony-faced.

Rabin had told Weizman, according to government sources, that the effort to broaden the coalition would divert political energy from the peace negotiations--and probably destroy the present center-left coalition by bringing in right-wing parties opposed to Israel’s accord with the PLO.

But Weizman’s appeal reflected the foreboding among Israelis that has grown with each death, each injury, each terrorist attack in recent weeks as the country prepares to pull back its forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“I have spent sleepless nights pondering the issues and asking what I can do as president,” Weizman said, “and I woke up this morning knowing what I must do.”

He conferred with Rabin, with a number of opposition leaders, with rabbis from Jewish communities in the occupied territories, and finally he made his impassioned appeal on the television program watched by virtually 90% of Israeli adults each evening.

“I am talking about what should be done, what must be done to preserve our national unity,” Weizman said, recalling previous unity governments in Israel. “We must have a broader base for the coalition.”

A former general and defense minister, Weizman became one of Israel’s most dovish politicians during the course of the peace negotiations with Egypt. Longtime associates suggested he was moved by genuine concern that Rabin’s virtual refusal to take public opinion into account during the talks with the PLO and other Arabs will undermine the process.

Elected president earlier this year, Weizman has spent much time in recent months touring the country, visiting with thousands of ordinary Israelis and going into neighborhoods and towns where Rabin and other Cabinet members have never been. This has given him an acute sense of what average Israelis want and fear from the peace agreement.

Rabin has only a one-seat majority in the Knesset, Israel’s 120-seat Parliament. A national unity government, as suggested by Weizman, would give him a wider base of support, but opposition forces say the philosophical gulf is too wide to bridge. Thousands of mourners on Tuesday joined in a cross-country funeral procession for two Jewish settlers, a father and son, gunned down the day before by Islamic militants, who have campaigned against the peace agreement.

The demonstrators burned tires and blocked roads in Jerusalem and in the West Bank to protest the slaying of Mordechai Lapid, 56, and his 19-year-old son, Shalom.

The funeral procession began in Bnei Brak, a religious suburb of Tel Aviv where Shalom Lapid studied at a Jewish seminary. Thousands followed in buses and cars, snarling evening rush-hour traffic as police closed roads to let the mourners pass. Other stops were the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem and then the cemetery in Kiryat Arba near the West Bank town of Hebron.

Outside the synagogue, some people carried posters showing the Sept. 13 handshake of Rabin and Arafat, depicting them with blood dripping from their hands.

A leaflet from the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, said the two Jews were slain Monday to avenge the death of Imad Aqel, the top man in its armed brigades who was shot by Israeli soldiers Nov. 24.

Hebron was under curfew with soldiers using loudspeakers to order the city’s 90,000 Palestinians to remain indoors. Troops were at almost every intersection.

Rabin said delaying the peace process would hand the terrorists a victory. Already the violence could delay Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and the Jericho district on the West Bank, set to begin Monday.