Israeli press acclaims Peres

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Mainstream Israeli newspapers have welcomed the inauguration of veteran politician Shimon Peres as president, following the resignation of the disgraced Moshe Katsav.

They see Mr Peres's election as overdue recognition for his life's work and the beginning of a new stage in his public service.

Orly Azulay in Yediot Aharonot

Yesterday Shimon Peres was sworn in as president and he accomplished what he had always aspired to with determination and persistence. He got recognition. Not only gratitude for a man who always knew how to see the whole picture and not only the details that made it, but recognition for all the things he has done for the country - things that have not always been self-evident, that were in general ahead of their time and caused him to be perceived by the Israeli public as hallucinatory, as a dreamer. Peres has won.

Yossi Verter in Ha'aretz

When Peres walks into the President's Residence tomorrow, the act will wipe the slate clean from the disgrace of Moshe Katzav, and a new, intriguing era will begin. If to judge from the interview he granted the Associated Press yesterday morning, in which he spoke of parting with the territories and of a Palestinian state, and knowing the man, it will be a very interesting tenure... During his Knesset address, Peres laid out his areas of intended activity: They include the entire world and then some, more or less. He knows that he does not have unlimited time. His hearing is not what it used to be, nor his memory. But he still has a good and steady supply of adrenalin, which should fuel his insatiable appetite for work.

Ben Kaspit in Ma'ariv

Finally a sigh of relief was heard from one end of the country to the other. Here he is, at last, the greatest living Israeli receiving what he deserves; what had been withheld from him all those long years. Here he is turning the tables and winning... Only once did he have real personal luck, on that terrible November night 12 years ago when Yigal Amir decided not to waste the bullets on him and waited [to kill Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally in Tel Aviv].

David Horovitz in The Jerusalem Post

Where the incoming president was deadly serious was on Iran's nuclear programme. "If terrorists get nuclear weapons, the world would become ungovernable," he said. "World leaders don't have a choice but to prevent it before it is too late. We have years, not decades." He went on to say that he truly didn't know which would happen first: whether Islamic extremism would go bankrupt or its leadership would attain a world-threatening nuclear capability. That kind of public acknowledgment of so existential an uncertainty, if made at a higher profile event than this Jewish People Policy Planning Institute conference, would probably not have gone down well with the political leadership. It would also likely have drawn international headlines. But then again, one imagines that Peres, even as president, has every intention of still making headlines.

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