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Knesset elects Navon
Israel’s fifth president
by Gil Sedan
JERUSALEM, (JTA)-The
Knesset Wednesday, April 19,
elected veteran Laborite Yitzhak
Navon as Israel's fifth President,
thus giving Israel its first Sephardi
President. He will succeed
Ephraim Katzir, whose four-year
term expires next month. Katzir
declined to stand for re-election for
personal reasons.
Yitzhak Navon
Navon was the only candidate
for the prestigious but largely
ceremonial office. Himself a long
time member of the Knesset and
chairman of its powerful Foreign
Affairs and Security Committee,
he received the votes of 86 of the
109 MKs present at the
Knesset session. Twenty blank
ballots were cast, presumably in
protest by disgruntled members of
Likud's Liberal Party wing and a
few others who had favored
Liberal Party leader Elimelech
Rimalt. Rimalt withdrew his
candidacy last month.
Nevertheless, Navon, 57, a one
time school teacher and former
political secretary to the late
Premier David Ben Gurion, was
elected by the largest majority ever
given a Presidential candidate. He
will resign from the Labor
Alignment’s Knesset faction
before he takes office in the middle
of May. He will be replaced by
Avraham Katz, a member of
Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
Navon was born in Jerusalem in
1921 and studied Hebrew
literature, pedagogy and Moslem
culture at the Hebrew University.
He taught in elementary <and
secondary schools and, during
Israel’s War for Independence,
served as director of the Arabic
department of Hagana. He joined
Israel’s foreign service after the
war and was sent to South
America in 1949 where he served as
Second Secretary of the Israeli
Embassy in Argentina.
Later he became political
secretary to Israel’s first Foreign
Minister, Moshc Sharett, and in
1952 joined Ben Gurion’s staff and
strved as his political secretary and
advisor until 1963.
He served as director of the
Education Ministry’s culture
division until his election to the
Knesset in 1965. He was by then
active in the newly formed Raft
faction which consisted of Ben
Gurion loyalists who broke away
from Mapai. He became that
faction’s leading “dove,’’ a political
stance far removed from the
majority of his Rafi colleagues.
Navon sought the Presidency
five years ago but was rejected by
the Labor Party leadership in
favor of Katzir, a non-political
scientist with a world-wide
reputation in the field of bio-chem
istry. When Katzir announced that
he would not seek a second term,
Navon announced his candidacy
again.
But with Likud in power, a
Laborite appeared to have little
chance. The picture changed when
Premier Menachem Begin
personally selected an obscure
nuclear scientist. Dr. Yitzhak
Shaveh, to succeed Katzir. This
aroused the ire of the Liberal Party
which favored Rimalt and, to
avoid a political battle with Likud.
Shaveh stepped down. When it
became apparent that Rimalt
could not be certain of a Knesset
majority, he also withdrew, leaving
the field open for Navon.
Israel’s President-elect is
married and is the father of two
children, aged 3 and 5. Navon, who
is a member of the old Jerusalem
Sephardi community, depicted
that community in his popular
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Page 9 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 28, 1978