The opposition party in Israel will seek impeachment proceedings against Israeli president.

JERUSALEM (AP) - The small opposition Meretz party said Wednesday it would seek parliamentary backing to launch impeachment proceedings against Israeli President Moshe Katsav, who faces indictment on charges of rape and abuse of power.

Katsav is expected to make a public statement later Wednesday and Israeli media speculate he might take a leave of absence while Attorney-General Meni Mazuz conducts a hearing ahead of a final decision whether to press charges.

Lawmaker Zehava Galon of Meretz said Katsav should have immediately resigned on Tuesday when Mazuz confirmed his intention to indict the president. She said she would start collecting the 20 lawmakers’ signatures necessary to convene an impeachment debate in parliament, without waiting for Katsav’s statement.

“We shall not await the president’s statement,” she told Israel Radio. “We are starting the process of signing up members of parliament to bring about the impeachment of the president.”

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Katsav Takes Temporary Leave Amid Sex Scandal (source: JTA)

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by Carol Lochhead

Washington — Iraq is in the throes of the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948, a mass flight out of and within the country that is ravaging basic services and commerce, swamping neighboring nations with nearly 2 million refugees and building intense pressure for emigration to Europe and the United States, according to the United Nations and refugee experts.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which appealed for $60 million in emergency aid last week, believes 1.7 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, whose prewar population was 21 million. About 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing inside Iraq each month, the United Nations said, and 500,000 have been displaced since last February’s bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. These figures are as of January 2007.

The Bush administration and the governments of Jordan and Syria, the nations that accept the bulk of the refugees, have been reluctant to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis, experts said.

“I think everyone at this point is in denial about the human consequences of the war,” said Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, who is familiar with the State Department’s views.

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by Sergey Strokan

Is Bush’s impeachment realistic? Several years ago, after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Congress tried to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush’s predecessor Bill Clinton. But even as the Republicans tried to unseat him and the press fanned the flames of scandal, the American public never understood what the president did that was so bad. In the November 1998 elections that they expected to win thanks to Lewinsky, the Republicans lost. Average Americans still liked Clinton. And then passions died down fast, and the new Congress rejected impeachment, allowing Clinton to finish out his term in peace.

Bush’s rating continues to fall, however, placing him in a different situation. America is paying for his geopolitical mistakes with daily bloodshed and huge monetary outlays. This is no melodrama with female aides in the pages of the yellow press. Potential 2008 presidential candidate Joseph Biden sounded convincing when he warned Republicans that supporting the president’s new plan will be political suicide. The case of Iraq differs from the Monica story, and Bush will have much more trouble shaking off its consequences.

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