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Impeachment Threat Against Israeli President Withdrawn
An impeachment threat levelled against Israel's newly-elected President Moshe Katsav has been dropped after the head of state clarified his controversial remarks on secular political leaders.
Lawmaker Yosef Paritzky of the Shinui Party, who made the impeachment threat, said Sunday that he accepted the president's clarification and will not let the impeachment proceedings go ahead, according to Shinui officials.
Katsav, a pious orthodox Jew, was earlier quoted by a orthodox newspaper as saying that the Jewish state would not have come into existence if all the Jews were "like (Meretz party leader) Yossi Sarid and (Shinui party leader) Tommy Lapid."
The comment infuriated Israel's secular circles as Sarid and Lapid are reputed secular figures and Paritzky threatened an impeachment motion unless the president apologizes.
Later, Katsav told Israel Radio that his words were taken out of context and what he had said was only that the Jewish people would have not remained unless they had kept the Jewish tradition.
Sarid, who is poised to rejoin Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's coalition as education minister, also reportedly accepted Katsav's clarification.
Katsav defeated Barak's presidential candidate, Regional Cooperation Minister Shimon Peres, in a dramatic presidential voting in Israel's Knesset (parliament) on July 31.
Most analysts attributed Katsav's success to his pledges that if elected, he would be president for all Israelis, secular and religious, and he would not meddle in political issues.
However, since his swearing-in on August 1, the president has made a string of controversial comments and moves. He spent his first days in office visiting Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Yitzhak Kadourie, two prominent religious leaders, showing his favoritism to orthodox Jews.
When Rabbi Yosef was caught into a great political disturbance because of his last weekend's sermon, in which he said 6 million Jews murdered by Nazis during the World War Two were "reincarnated sinners," and the Palestinians are "snakes," President Katsav refrained from blasting him.
Last Wednesday, Katsav said that he cannot imagine a situation in which Jews will not live in Hebron, a West Bank city where 450 Jewish settlers live among 130,000 Palestinians.
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