1998 Israeli Presidential Election

The Israeli presidency is a largely ceremonial office whose occupant is elected not by the general public but by the 120-member Knesset in a secret ballot.[3][4] Under the rules in force for the 1998 election, the original 1964 Basic Law provided for a five-year presidential term, with a president eligible for one additional term.[4] A candidate required the support of at least ten Knesset members but did not need to be a serving member of the Knesset.[5] If neither candidate secured an absolute majority of at least 61 votes, additional voting would be required; the Knesset prepared for as many as four rounds in 1998.[6]

The president represents Israel internationally and exercises the power of pardon. Except during the 1996–2001 system of direct prime-ministerial elections, the office also normally participates in government formation.[3][4] Ezer Weizman, a former military commander and politician, had served as Israel's seventh president since 1993.[7] His presidency was more politically active than those of his predecessors, and contemporaneous commentary reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disliked having a popular president pressing for an acceleration of the peace process.[8][9]

Ezer Weizman stood as the incumbent seeking a second five-year term. His challenger was Shaul Amor, the Likud candidate.[10] Amor had begun his political career in the Labor Party, served as deputy mayor of Karmiel, and was elected mayor of Migdal HaEmek in 1978 on an independent list before joining Likud.[11]

Amor sought to give his candidacy a communal or ethnic character, using the slogan "the first president from Israel's Second Israel."[11] Pre-election commentary described Amor as being of Moroccan origin and characterized Weizman as representing the Ashkenazi ruling class, but these were campaign-era political framings rather than neutral descriptions of the candidates or electorate.[9] Weizman's supporters associated the campaign's ethnic dimension with the presentation of Amor as the candidate of "the Second Israel," while Labor leader Ehud Barak criticized the Sephardi-Ashkenazi tension that had entered the race.[1]

Leah Rabin, widow of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was reported to support Amor because she believed Weizman had undermined the peace process during her late husband's premiership. The same commentary reported that Netanyahu opposed Weizman because the popular president pressed for faster movement in the peace process.[9] These were contemporaneous interpretations of political motives, not independently confirmed explanations.

The election took place in the Knesset plenum on March 4, 1998.[1] Members voted in a wooden booth using slips bearing the candidates' names. The polling committee kept the slips in even piles so that later voters would not be influenced by seeing which candidate appeared to be ahead.[1] Voting took approximately 80 minutes, followed by a count of about 20 minutes.[6]

One incident briefly interrupted the proceedings. Labor MK Eli Ben-Menahem deliberately displayed his ballot choice despite a warning that revealing it could invalidate the vote. After consulting the Knesset legal adviser, the polling committee accepted his explanation that the ballot had fallen from his hands in excitement and ruled that disclosure did not itself invalidate the ballot. No votes were disqualified.[1][6]

Gesher MK Michael Kleiner did not vote, honoring a pledge to abstain because the governing coalition had not selected a joint candidate and Amor had been chosen only within Likud.[6] A second round proved unnecessary: Weizman secured 63 votes to Amor's 49, with seven blank ballots, surpassing the required threshold of 61.[1] An estimate circulated in the Knesset that some Labor MKs who did not support Weizman had cast blank ballots, but this was not a confirmed breakdown of the seven blank votes.[6]

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who had tried to assist Amor before voting began, was the first to congratulate Weizman by telephone. He said the result was not a political failure for him and that "democracy had won." Amor called the contest fair and said it was difficult to defeat an incumbent president. Weizman telephoned Amor to congratulate him on what he called a courageous contest.[6]

After the result, Weizman said he had anticipated the outcome and felt reassured that most citizens were with him. He described a personal "traffic-light survey" in which he observed people's reactions whenever his car stopped at red lights around the country.[6] He also said he intended to address political, educational, economic, and security matters and work toward equalizing rights for Israel's Arab sector.[1]

Weizman's inauguration for his second term was scheduled for May 18, 1998.[1] He remained president until July 2000, when he resigned amid bribery allegations relating to his earlier political career; charges were not pressed because the statute of limitations had expired.[8] His presidency consequently ran from 1993 to 2000.[7]

An amendment enacted in 1998 replaced the renewable five-year presidential term with a single, non-renewable seven-year term.[4] A retrospective account citing Professor Ofer Kenig argued that the spectacle of an incumbent president having to conduct a political campaign was one of the principal factors behind the change.[2]

The 1998 election was the first Israeli presidential race against an incumbent and breached a long-standing convention against challenging a serving president.[1][2] A survey of Israeli political structures placed Netanyahu's failure to secure Amor's election within a broader pattern in which Labor- or Mapai-associated candidates had prevailed even during Likud governments and right-wing Knesset majorities.[5]

The campaign also made communal representation an explicit theme. Amor argued through his "Second Israel" slogan that a candidate identified with historically peripheral communities could reach the state's highest office, while contemporary coverage recorded the resulting Sephardi-Ashkenazi tensions.[9][11] Because the amended law permits presidents to serve only one term, the 1998 contest became the final presidential reelection under Israel's former renewable-term system.[4]

A Jewish Virtual Library biography dates Weizman's reelection to May 1998, while contemporaneous reporting establishes that the Knesset vote occurred on March 4 and that his inauguration was scheduled for May 18.[8][1] The discrepancy may therefore reflect a conflation of the vote and inauguration dates.

Contemporaneous Globes coverage described Weizman's new term as five years, while a governance reference states that the law was amended later in 1998 to establish a single seven-year term.[6][4] The available sources do not provide the amendment's precise effective date.