Peres Loses Presidency to Israeli Right

In a stunning upset aimed at punishing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Nobel Peace laureate Shimon Peres was defeated Monday in his bid to become president, losing a parliamentary vote to an obscure right-wing legislator.

The defeat came even as Barak survived--as expected--an attempt to bring down his government, a move that would have frozen his controversial efforts to make peace with the Palestinians.

With parliament preparing to adjourn for about three months, Barak got a reprieve. But Peres took the fall.

Right-wing and religious parties, condemning Barak for his willingness to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians at the failed Camp David summit, handed a humiliating defeat to Peres and elected one of their own, Moshe Katzav of the opposition Likud Party, as the next president of Israel.

Instead of crowning his formidable career with the presidency, Peres confirmed his image as a perennial loser. A principal architect of the historic Oslo peace accords, Peres has led his Labor Party to electoral defeat in four of five outings, unable to capture the affection at home to match his acclaim abroad.

Now, however, as he prepares to turn 77, it seemed that fondness for Peres had grown in the public eye, and he was the hands-down favorite to win the presidency, a largely ceremonial but increasingly vocal position.

But Katzav won 63 votes to Peres’ 57 in a second round of voting after Katzav fell one vote short of the 61 needed for outright victory in the first round.

Crestfallen, the silver-haired Peres slumped in a chair after hearing the results, then staggered from the parliament, or Knesset, offering only a few words of congratulations to the new president-elect.

It must have seemed like deja vu for Peres, who was widely touted to win the 1996 race for prime minister against Benjamin Netanyahu. Peres was the incumbent, having stepped in to replace slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but he lost by a scant 40,000 votes.

A few months later, Barak blocked him from the presidency of the Labor Party. In a morose scene at the party convention, Peres implored the audience, “Am I a loser?” And, to his shock, party members replied, “Yes!”

Television commentators Monday night said this defeat was the worst of all. And they said that if Barak can’t get his presidential candidate past the Knesset, he won’t be able to pass anything, “not even a gardening law.”

“What happened today was an earthquake, the implications of which will reach well beyond the nonelection of Shimon Peres,” said Uri Savir, a longtime associate of Peres and a Knesset member from the Center Party, which is allied with the Barak government. “To my great regret, there’s no majority for peace here, the same way there was no majority for Peres.”

Members of Barak’s own government were calling for new elections as a way to get past the deadlock of Knesset intransigence. Several analysts agreed that early elections may be inevitable.

“Barak has only one course now: Come up with an agreement [in the next weeks], go to new elections, win big, which he will, and form a new government for peace and for domestic issues,” said Yaron Ezrahi, senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. “Even though he is much weakened, he knows the people will support a peace deal. It is the only way to deliver on his promises and stay in power.”

As president, Katzav replaces Ezer Weizman, who was forced to step down after a financial scandal in which he admitted receiving money from a French tycoon. It is the first time in Israel’s history that its president has come from the right.

Likud Members All but Dance in the Aisles

Members of the Likud Party, who engineered Peres’ humiliation and the later no-confidence vote against Barak, all but danced in the aisles of the Knesset after Katzav’s victory was announced. In stark contrast to Peres’ staunchly pro-peace advocacy, Katzav shares Likud’s more hawkish positions.

“These results express the feeling of the country here,” crowed Likud leader Ariel Sharon. “The time has arrived to replace this government.”

“Barak is the loser today,” chimed in Shlomo Benizri, one of the many Cabinet ministers who deserted Barak in recent days. He represents the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, whose support for Katzav was decisive. Benizri said he was confident that Katzav, an Iranian-born politician of modest record, would promote Israel’s “traditional and religious values.”

Barak and his remaining loyalists were shocked at Peres’ loss.

“Today is one of those days when I am ashamed to be a Knesset member,” said Yossi Sarid, head of the leftist Meretz Party, which is also part of the governing coalition. “The Knesset is an institution which is totally cut off from the public, who wanted Peres as president in an absolute and unambiguous way.”

The defeat of Peres reflected the weakened status of Barak’s government, shaky for months but truly in crisis with the defection last month of three of the six parties that make up the ruling coalition. All deserted on the eve of the Camp David summit over unprecedented concessions that Barak was willing to make to the Palestinians, including shared power in Jerusalem and the surrender of about 90% of the West Bank.

There was another underlying theme. Katzav is an observant Jew of Sephardic ethnic background and as such appealed to religious parties, especially Shas, which harbors great resentment toward the Ashkenazi elite that Peres, and Barak, represent.

Shas may be punishing Barak, analysts said, for failing to do more for the largely Sephardic underclass, which suffers discrimination and disproportionate poverty.

Katzav was able to tap into the anger and alienation that fuels the “other Israel” of have-nots and disenfranchised. He donned a large black kippa and said a prayer in the brief Knesset ceremony recognizing his victory.

“He capitalized on his own biography, stressing his rise as a new immigrant who arrived in Israel from Iran at the age of 6--[and] his struggle to climb up the Israeli social ladder,” author Daniel Ben-Simon wrote in today’s Haaretz newspaper. “All members of the Shas Party, for instance, understand where Katzav was coming from.”

Spiritual Leader Urges a Vote for Rightist

Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, the spiritual leader of Shas, was reported to have sent a letter to Shas members urging them to vote for Katzav, about whom he apparently sensed victory.

The Knesset that denied Peres his long-sought personal redemption could not, at the end of the tumultuous day, oust the government.

The second no-confidence motion in just three weeks failed by a 50-50 vote, 11 votes shy of the absolute majority needed to pass.

With the censure motion failing and the Israeli parliament about to adjourn, Barak’s besieged government suddenly got a breather. Barak will be free to press ahead with attempts to salvage a comprehensive peace treaty.

In defending himself against censure, Barak called on Knesset members to rise above “petty politics” to move ahead with peace. But Sharon, in introducing the measure, took the podium at the Knesset to blast Barak for a litany of what he considered unacceptable compromises with the Palestinians.