The Jerusalem Post

Friday, January 28, 1994
CONGRATULATING Ezer Weizman on his election as president last June, the prime minister remarked that the near future would, in all likelihood, see grave decisions that would seriously divide popular opinion.

The function of the presidency, he continued, was to assure these decisions were accepted and national unity preserved, despite the divisions.

This was probably the first high-level intimation of the beginning of the process that was to lead, a few months later, to the Oslo Declaration of Principles with the PLO.

Replying, Weizman quipped that he had a better idea what he wouldn't be allowed to do as president than what he would be allowed. He well understood, he said, that he couldn't just pick up the phone and call Syrian President Assad, although, he continued to the accompaniment of general laughter, he would be glad to do so, if asked.

This week, at the start of his state visit to Turkey, he came close to doing just that. Speaking at a state dinner, he declared that at the Geneva summit, Hafez Assad had "failed to understand the expectations of the Israeli public." He called on the Syrian president "to make a bold decision and meet Israelis, to get to know our prime minister and foreign minister."

Weizman's allusion to public opinion in Israel should be taken together with his implied acceptance of the idea of a popular referendum on a settlement with Syria. This latter statement was severely criticized by former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir in a TV interview. Shamir claimed that Weizman had exceeded the traditional role of the president by taking a position on a controversial issue. Actually, Weizman has demonstrated a fine sense of discrimination in dealing with sensitive topics. In his appeal to Assad, the subject of the Golan Heights was not even mentioned. His remarks about a referendum did not affirm that it was the only, or even the most desirable, option available.

However, they were both significant expressions of the presidential role in the political arena. Abroad, particularly in Syria, as well as in Egypt, where Weizman enjoys wide respect and even admiration, his statements, taken together, will provide a necessary caveat on the importance of winning popular support in Israel for a settlement on the Golan.

IN THE United States, Weizman's utterances will add credibility to Rabin's reservations about the Geneva summit. There are plenty of key players in the Clinton administration, Warren Christopher among them, who have not forgotten that Weizman accompanied Jimmy Carter on a presidential jet (eating ice cream, as Weizman later explained) during the disastrous 1980 election campaign, while most Israeli politicians supported Ronald Reagan, the successful Republican rival.

At home, Weizman's statements also have political impact. Their effect is, in the strictest sense, legitimation - conferring legitimacy on Assad as a partner for peace, in the one case, and conferring legitimacy on a referendum as an acceptable method of national decision-making, in the other. This conferring of legitimacy is the quintessence of the presidential role. It translates into action Rabin's congratulatory exhortation to Weizman on the importance of the presidency in making divisive decisions acceptable.

Weizman has also performed the presidential role in his visits to settlers in Judea and Samaria. Again, the proper interpretation of his action is legitimation - or, more precisely, the rejection of delegitimation. So too, his statements to Jordan Rift farmers, supporting their right to oppose an interim settlement that would include them within the boundaries of Palestinian autonomy.

Before Weizman's election, there were calls for the abolition of the office of president. The new law for direct election of the prime minister, it was argued, made the presidency an unnecessary, ceremonial position. In fact, perhaps the most significant presidential initiatives have their roots in the broad legal definition of the president as chief of state, rather than in any specific statutory authority.

President Chaim Herzog, for example, faced with a crisis over the breakdown of health services, demanded the appointment of what became the Netanyahu Commission, whose recommendations are the basis for the pending national health law. He also pushed hard for electoral reform. Before him, Yitzhak Navon mobilized the national conscience in his call for an investigation into the massacres in the Beirut refugee camps.

The ultimate extension of presidential initiative would likely occur if all other political forces were stalemated. Given Israel's present parliamentary division, this is a possibility that cannot be ruled out.