Navon Agrees to Run for President While Shaveh Withdraws from Race

Labor Party veteran Yitzhak Navon, who last week withdrew as a candidate to succeed Israeli President Ephraim Katzir, today appeared likely to be Israel’s next President without any opposition. Navon announced his renewed candidacy today, a day after Prof. Yitzhak Shaveh, Premier Menachem Begin’s personal choice for the presidency, withdrew.

Shaveh withdrew because of strong opposition from Likud’s Liberal Party wing which supported its own veteran leader, Elimelech Rimalt. But, after Navon’s announcement, Rimalt said that he is withdrawing because he learned that members of Begin’s Herut will support Navon. He said he wanted to prevent a split in the Likud and the government coalition.

Sources close to Begin told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Premier had not asked Shaveh to step down. But he is understood to have let his political intimates know that he would welcome a voluntary withdrawal. Shaveh, a nuclear physicist, was virtually unknown outside of scientific circles until Begin summoned him home from work in Paris last month and persuaded him to be a candidate to succeed Katzir whose four-year term ends in May.

Begin’s selection of Shaveh angered his Liberal Party partners in Likud. When Rimalt announced his candidacy, the Liberals endorsed him. Rimalt was also supported by elements of the Labor Party, the Democratic Movement for Change, several small leftist factions and some members of the religious parties. Shaveh’s candidacy seemed doomed and to continue it would only have added to the political embarrassment of Begin.

Shaveh said as much on a radio interview yesterday. He said he was withdrawing because his candidacy was causing needless rifts within the coalition and Likud. He also complained that the media had not always been fair to him and at times, cruel and tendentious. Shaveh was widely reported to hold extreme right-wing nationalist views.

WILL SEEK TO REPRESENT ENTIRE COUNTRY

Navon told a press conference today that he decided not to put forward his candidacy last week because “I felt I lacked the necessary backing among Knesset members. Since then it had become clear that there is ample support for my candidacy in the Knesset, irrespective of factions, blocs and community.”

Navon, who is a Jerusalem-born Sephardi, said he will not represent any single party or group but will seek to represent the entire country. National Religious Party leader Yehuda Ben Meir said that his faction would support Navon and Navon is expected to have the support of Labor, most DMC members and many in Likud.

Israel’s President is elected by the Knesset. The elections, originally scheduled to be held on April 10, were postponed to April 19 at the request of Likud and NRP members to give the government time to extricate itself from the embarrassment caused by Begin’s endorsement of Shaveh.