Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin and his deputies set a June 2 date on Monday for the race to succeed Reuven Rivlin and become Israel’s 11th president.
The secret ballot vote in the Knesset had to be held at least a month before Rivlin’s term will end on July 9. To run, candidates must submit the signatures of 10 MKs who support them two weeks before the vote, which is May 19.
The candidates who have officially announced that they are running are former Labor Party minister Shimon Shetreet, former Likud MK Yehudah Glick, former Labor MK Michael Bar-Zohar and solar energy pioneer Yosef Abramowitz.
Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog will formally announce in the days ahead that he is a candidate. Herzog, whose father Chaim Herzog was Israel’s sixth president, has support from MKs in every faction. If he leaves the Jewish Agency, Jewish leaders will have to choose his successor.
There has been a petition drive to persuade Israel Prize-winning educator Miriam Peretz to run for president, but she would have to work quickly. While every other candidate has been meeting as many MKs as possible, Peretz has instead been meeting family members of victims of the Meron disaster.
Economy Minister Amir Peretz, who is unrelated to Miriam, started meeting with MKs but decided not to run.
In announcing the date, Levin said he hoped the candidate chosen would be acceptable to all sectors of society. The candidates responded that they fit the bill.
Bar-Zohar, if he is elected, would make the President’s Residence a place for those sectors to get to know one another. He also pledged to heal rifts with Diaspora Jews.
Shetreet said that his background going from a child Bible quiz winner from a transit camp in Tiberias to an internationally renowned legal scholar and cabinet minister made him the ideal candidate to unite the country.
Glick told The Jerusalem Post at the Knesset on Monday that he “prays to succeed in his missions of uniting the people of Israel, connecting the Jewish world to the Jewish state and representing the State of Israel as a light upon the nations.”