JERUSALEM - Israel's Supreme Court has delayed a widely criticized plea bargain that dropped the threat of rape charges and jail time against the former president, giving the state until Monday afternoon to defend the deal.
Under the agreement signed last week, Moshe Katsav would confess to indecent acts, sexual harassment and obstruction of justice, and receive a suspended sentence. But on Sunday, the court --faced with three petitions against the deal -- ruled the agreement could not go forward until Attorney General Meni Mazuz explained why he backed away from a plan announced in January to file rape charges that could carry a 20-year prison term.
The deal's critics fear it would allow Katsav to fade quietly away, with the gravest of the charges buried. There is also concern that by shunting aside rape counts it will discourage assaulted women from stepping forward.
As part of the bargain, Katsav stepped down as Israel's ceremonial leader on Sunday, two weeks before his term was to expire. Parliament Speaker Dalia Itzik, who has served as acting president, will continue to do so until President-elect Shimon Peres is inaugurated next month.
Four women who worked for Katsav charged that he repeatedly groped them, kissed them, exposed himself to them and -- in two cases -- raped them while he served as president and earlier, when he was tourism minister. The allegations shocked Israelis by painting the country's symbolic head as a predatory boss who repeatedly used his authority over female employees to force sexual favors.
In January, Mazuz announced his intention to file rape charges, pending a final hearing with Katsav's lawyers, which took place in May.
Katsav claims he was the victim of a witch hunt. He stepped aside in January to fight the charges but refused to resign until the plea bargain forced him to do so.
While seen as an unlikely scenario, the Supreme Court judges could declare that Mazuz's considerations in signing the plea bargain were unacceptable and send it back to be drafted anew, said Noya Rimalt, an expert on criminal law and feminist legal theory at Haifa University.
In announcing the plea bargain, Mazuz said one of his considerations was the reputation of the Israeli presidency and his desire to avoid a prolonged trial with painful headlines -- a point Rimalt believes could be legally invalid and might provide a motive for the court to strike down the deal.
Even if the Supreme Court chooses to let the deal go ahead, a lower level court that has to approve it could decide the sentence is too light, imposing a heavier one, Rimalt said.
The public outcry might also play a role, she said.
"Judges are not supposed to be affected by such things, but of course they're human beings," Rimalt said.
Framing the public protest is a slow evolution in Israeli public opinion, once tolerant of sexual misbehavior by high-ranking public figures, said Tziona Koenig-Yair, executive director of the Israel Women's Network, one of the three groups behind the Supreme Court appeals.
Israeli heroes like Moshe Dayan were reputedly notorious philanderers, an excess that the country's macho culture was willing to accept then. But that changed with the conviction of Yitzhak Mordechai, a former defense minister, for sexual assault in 2001, and continued with the conviction of former Cabinet minister Haim Ramon for sexual misconduct earlier this year.
"It's a change that has taken place over a decade or two, and especially in the last five years," Koenig-Yair said. "The public is tired of public officials who are supposed to represent them behaving in this way, and the Katsav case just crossed a line that people were not prepared to accept anymore."
As a former president, Katsav is supposed to have the government pay for an office, secretaries, and a car and driver -- for life. Those benefits have also come under fire, and Parliament's Finance Committee was set to discuss them this week.
"It's inconceivable that he'll get an office, and two secretaries, and a driver and a car. It seems to me pretty dangerous for secretaries to work with a serial sex offender," lawmaker Zehava Galon told Channel 10 TV on Sunday.
