Scandals shake Israeli public's faith

Under a torrent of demands for his resignation and a growing movement to impeach him, Israeli President Moshe Katsav asked parliament Wednesday for a leave of absence. The move came one day after the attorney general announced he planned to charge Mr. Katsav with rape and other sexual offenses following months of investigation.

Katsav, who said Wednesday he would resign immediately if he is officially indicted, now sits perched at what many Israelis view as the pinnacle – literally and figuratively – of a government in a state of moral decline.

A slew of civilian and military leaders here are under investigation for various types of wrongdoing, and the nation's regard for its top elected official is at an all-time low, with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert garnering approval ratings as low as 14 percent. And although Israelis have been showing increasingly less regard for their once-venerated institutions over the past decade, this new slide in public confidence coincides with a range of indicators pointing in the direction of change.

This, some pollsters say, includes the increased likelihood of Israel heading toward earlier-than-planned elections. In the interim, it is improbable that Israel's government and even its Army, historically viewed as an institution above the political fray, will have the wherewithal and support necessary to make groundbreaking moves toward peace with the Palestinians or with Syria, both of which are in the offing.

"What happened in the last few years is that we've had the erosion of all government systems in Israel, the justice department, the courts, the leaders, and especially the politicians. If you attach the title 'politician' to anyone, his ranking will immediately go down 20 points," says Rafi Smith, director of the Smith Polling Institute in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv.

"The credibility of all the leaders is in question, because most of them are either under investigation or have a cloud of corruption over them," Mr. Smith says, "and there is a perception that corruption is a real problem here."

Several studies prove the point. In the 2006 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, published by the Berlin-based graft watchdog, Israel ranks 34th. Israel's ranking, says one Israeli watchdog group, is down from the late 1990s, when it was in the high teens.

"The moral standards have declined in that it's become a 'me' generation where private gain trumps public good," says Michael Partem, the deputy chairman of the Movement for Quality Government in Israel. The organization, which has nearly 20,000 members, has come to play a particularly active in role in fighting corruption and making legal challenges to poor governance. It runs four hotlines and made 1,500 legal complaints last year – some of which were then taken up by the Supreme Court. It also played a critical role in calling for the establishment of the Winograd Commission, which is investigating the conduct of various leaders during last summer's war between Israel and Lebanon.

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