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President of the State of Israel (, Nesí Hamdiná) is the Head of State of Israel, but has a largely ceremonial, figurehead role with real power lying in the hands of the Prime Minister of Israel. The current President is Moshe Katsav.
Election The President is elected by an absolute majority by the Knesset (the Israeli parliament). As of the third round of voting, if no candidate receives an absolute majority, a simple majority is enough. A president's full term is seven years. A president cannot be re-elected to a second term. Until recently, the president was elected for a five-year term, and was allowed to serve up to two terms in office. Any Israeli citizen who is a resident of the State is eligible to be a presidential candidate. The office falls vacant upon resignation or upon the decision of three-quarters of the Knesset to impeach the president on grounds of misconduct or incapacity. Presidential tenure is not keyed to that of the Knesset in order to assure continuity in government and the nonpartisan character of the office. There is no vice president in the Israeli governmental system. When the president is temporarily incapacitated or the office falls vacant, the speaker of the Knesset may become acting president. For more information see Basic Law: The President of the State. Presidential powers and roles The president's powers are rather limited in scope compared to heads of state in other countries. The president: Presidential powers are usually exercised based on the recommendation of appropriate government ministers. Although the president's role is non-political, Israeli heads of state perform important moral, ceremonial, and educational functions. Israeli Presidents also play a part in the formation of the cabinet, or government. They are required to consult leaders of all political parties in the Knesset and to designate a member of the legislature to organize a cabinet. If the member so appointed fails, other political parties commanding a plurality in the Knesset may submit their own nominee. The figure called upon to form a cabinet is invariably the leader of the most influential political party or bloc in the Knesset. List of Israeli Presidents All Israeli presidents from Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to Ezer Weizman have been members of, or associated with, the Labour Party and its predecessors, and all have been considered politically moderate. Moshe Katsav is the first Likud president. These tendencies were especially significant in the April 1978 election of Labour's Yitzhak Navon, following the inability of the governing Likud coalition to elect its candidate to the presidency. Israeli observers believed that, in counterbalance to Prime Minister Begin's polarizing leadership, Navon, the country's first president of Sephardi origin, provided Israel with unifying symbolic leadership at a time of great political controversy and upheaval. In 1983 Navon decided to re-enter Labour politics after five years of nonpartisan service as president, and Chaim Herzog (previously head of military intelligence and ambassador to the United Nations) succeeded him as Israel's sixth president. Likud's Moshe Katsav's victory over Labour's Shimon Peres in 2000 was an upset. In 1952 the presidency was offered to Albert Einstein who declined. See also | ||||||||
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