Israeli Figurehead Going to Bat for Peace

During eight months of bloodshed, Israelis and Palestinians alike have considered their public relations battle to be at least as significant as the actual fighting. Each side has devoted enormous energy to arguing the justness of its cause and the severity of its suffering to an international community that both expect will eventually play a key role in restoring calm.

This week, Israeli President Moshe Katsav will join the parade of his nation’s envoys who have traveled to the United States to press the government’s case. He is heading for Washington to urge pressure on Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to agree to a cease-fire following Israel’s unilateral declaration of one last week.

“I believe that for the Palestinian Authority, how much the international community is backing it is very important, maybe the most important thing in its struggle,” Katsav said in an interview at his official residence. “If Yasser Arafat will see that the international community is backing him, he will continue his way. If he sees it is not backing him . . . then he will not want to lose his popularity.”

Katsav is scheduled to meet with President Bush, other senior administration officials and leaders of the U.S. Jewish community in a visit also set to include stops in New York and Los Angeles.

The recent fighting has left Israelis feeling depressed and disappointed, Katsav said, and in what he called a “low mood.” But Israelis still believe, he insisted, that eventually the two sides will return to negotiations.

The Dilemma of a Draining Conflict

Israel is not engaged in the sort of struggle for existence that it faced during its 1948 War of Independence and subsequent wars, Katsav said. But in some ways, it is easier to wage a war than to be locked in this sort of draining conflict, he said.

“We know that we have the ability to defeat the Palestinians,” he said. “But if we will use our force, it means the destruction of the peace process. We want to keep the peace process from being destroyed.”

The president stood by remarks he made after two Israeli boys were stoned to death near their West Bank settlement earlier this month--that those who perpetrated such a crime are “from a different galaxy” than civilized society.

“I had just come out from visiting the parents, and the mother of one of the boys had told me that she could not recognize her son,” Katsav said. “How can someone from our galaxy do such a thing?”

In Israel, the role of president is a largely ceremonial one. In the past, senior politicians near the end of their careers--men thought to be above the fray of electoral politics--filled the job. Katsav has broken that mold in many ways.

Just 56 years old, he was a leader of the now-ruling Likud Party when he decided to run for the office last summer against Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres.

Peres, Israel’s most internationally recognized statesman, was considered a shoo-in. But Katsav capitalized on anger in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, at then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians, and he pulled off an upset victory.

Sephardim, as Israelis born in Middle Eastern countries and their descendants are called, were thrilled that one of their own was president. The political establishment was stunned.

Katsav, an immigrant from Iran, is the first Israeli president born in an Islamic country. He is also the first head of state to hail from Israel’s socioeconomic periphery, having grown up poor in the working-class town of Kiryat Malachi, and the first president elected from the right-wing Likud.

Critics Point to a Lack of Magnetism

Some critics have charged that in this time of crisis, he also has proved to be one of the nation’s least compelling presidents.

“When the president speaks to the nation, it is important,” political analyst Hanan Crystal said. “When Moshe Katsav speaks to the nation, it is the third, fourth or fifth item in the news. It is a question of charisma--he does not have it.”

The dapper, soft-spoken Katsav’s low presidential profile is often contrasted with the headline-grabbing habits of his predecessor, Ezer Weizman.

Weizman, a war hero who abandoned his hawkish views when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat offered to make peace with Israel, often locked horns publicly with prime ministers over their conduct of peace negotiations with the Palestinians. He once pushed a reluctant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into meeting with Arafat by threatening to meet with the Palestinian leader himself if Netanyahu didn’t.

Katsav has made no such controversial moves. In fact, in an article written in November, analyst Vered Levy-Barzilai of the newspaper Haaretz referred to him as the “absentee president.”

She took Katsav to task for failing to make any bold gestures toward reconciliation after Israeli Arabs rioted for a week in October and the nation felt threatened from both within and without. Katsav, Levy-Barzilai said, did nothing more than call for a national unity government.

Katsav said he still believes in the importance of the broad-based coalition that he encouraged Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to form with the Labor Party after Sharon trounced Barak in an election in February. The nation’s problems, Katsav said, are simply too complex for any one party to deal with.

But he acknowledged that the government has not yet kept its promise to the Israeli public to restore security.

“The credit of the government is not unlimited,” he said. “Israeli society expects for the government to stop the violence and the terrorism.”

For now, “the government is strong enough, stable enough to survive,” he said. “But what will be at the end of the year, I can’t know.”