TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- A sad and worried Israeli President Moshe Katsav has left his official residence in Jerusalem and returned to his lower-middle class town of Kiryat Malachi, south of Tel Aviv. Officially he went home for the weekend, but it was not clear whether he would return.
Several hours before his departure Thursday, the Knesset (Parliament) House committee approved his request for a leave of absence and his powers were automatically transferred to Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik.
Katsav is now president in title only as he and his lawyers will try to convince Attorney General Meni Mazuz not to charge him with rape, prohibited intercourse and sexual harassment of four women.
With 71 percent of the Israelis wanting him to resign, according to a Yediot Aharonot poll, and a feeling that he embarrassed an entire country, the leave was no favor.
Knesset members who approved it said it was the way to get him out of the President's Residence -- immediately. "I don't think he has to be president even one more day," said coalition chairman Avigdor Yitzhaki.
Michael Eitan of the Likud, who had initiated the law allowing for leave, argued that none of the speakers saw the evidence against Katsav. The president has not even been charged, and sacking him would be an irreversible act. "We have to protect his rights," Eitan argued.
One must demand more of a president and that has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence, countered Arab Knesset member Ahmad Tibi.
Other Knesset members, who opposed the leave, said they feared it would ruin their chances of firing him.
"The presidency is a symbol... and the symbol is tarnished.... We are responsible. This (Knesset) ... elected him," said Rabbi Michael Melchior of the Labor-Meimad faction.
The leave of absence turned into the first step. Next week the House Committee will decide on the procedure for sacking a president. The process is expected to take six weeks and would require the support of 90 members in the 120-seat legislature. At the moment there is no such majority for his dismissal, Yediot Aharonot reported.
The 61-year-old president had started the ball rolling last July when he summoned Mazuz and complained that his former chief of bureau, who may be identified only as "A," was trying to extort him.
Mazuz ordered a police inquiry. "A" was questioned and alleged that Katsav had raped her. The tables turned and police focused on Katsav's alleged offences. Ten women complained against him, but because some of those complaints are old, the attorney general focused on four cases.
Mazuz said he had "sufficient prima facie evidence" to charge the president with raping one woman, also called "A," who had worked in the Tourism Ministry when he was minister. Katsav allegedly had "prohibited intercourse" with the first "A" who headed the president's bureau.
The Haaretz newspaper suggested Katsav is not accused of having raped her probably because employees had heard her say she had an affair with him. Even if it was an affair, Katsav allegedly broke the law that prohibits a person from taking advantage of his authority.
The president performed "indecent acts" against two more employees, Mazuz alleged. Rape carries a maximum 16-year jail sentence.
In the "hearing" offered Katsav, Mazuz said he would be "open-hearted and willing; ready to be convinced...before taking the final decision."
Katsav Wednesday invited reporters to his residence, sat his wife Gila and family members beside him, and in a voice sometimes choking with emotion and sometimes combative and forceful, blasted the attorney general, the police and the media.
"A venomous, terrible, unprecedented campaign based on deceitful despicable information" led Mazuz to consider pressing criminal charges, he claimed.
During a 50-minute address he accused police of having collaborated with the media and maintained the media did not let facts confuse it.
Katsav said police questioned all the women who had worked with him in the past 30 years, and threatened an orthodox woman who had testified for him that they would search in her underpants. "I shall fight to death until my justice is proven," he declared.
Katsav said he had fired one of the four women referred to in the planned charge sheet and that he had testimonies that two women had said they would take revenge. Some of the women had asked to work for him again and were refused, he added.
Retired police commander Amnon Shealtiel told Channel 1 TV there seemed to be no forensic evidence to back the charges against Katsav, so a trial's outcome would depend on whose testimonies the court believes. That is why the defense attorneys will try to undermine the prosecution witnesses' credibility, at least to raise doubts in the court's mind. In order to convict Katsav the court must be sure of his guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.
In the smear campaign that emerged, Attorney, Amnon Shomron, Katsav's friend, told the army radio station he knew that one of the women "engaged in this," referring to prostitution. Kineret Barashi, that woman's attorney, sued him for libel.
Katsav maintained that the affluent Israeli elite never accepted him, an Iranian-born Jew, and that accusation rang a bell with some Jews from Arab countries; but some of his most vociferous critics were Jews from Middle Eastern countries and Mazuz' family came from Tunisia.
Presidents around the world had discrete lovers but did not rape their secretaries, wrote Haaretz columnist Yoel Marcus. "Israel is the only country in the world whose president ...according to the stunning charge sheet ...raped, forced intercourse and performed indecent acts with female subordinates like a sex maniac," Marcus added.
The events reopened the race for the presidency. Itzik denied she would run for the job. Other candidates at the moment are Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Former Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, former Chief Rabbi Israel Lau and Labor Knesset Member Colette Avital.
