Tamara Zieve -
Though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set for a fifth term after the general elections, his record time in office could be cut short by an indictment, analysts predict.
However, Netanyahu isn’t going to go easy: Analysts say he’ll do everything in his power to prevent corruption indictments from prompting an early exit if he is tapped as prime minister-designate.
The threat of looming indictments is also expected to play a key role in coalition-building negotiations.
Netanyahu “will very likely demand from his coalition partners not to topple the coalition if he is indicted, and this might be very much the case,” said Emmanuel Navon, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University. He added that Netanyahu was the clear winner of the election. “There is no way Benny Gantz can form a government,” Navon said about Netanyahu’s main rival.
“Not only because he does not have extra seats compared to Likud, and therefore he cannot even claim some kind of psychological victory, but there’s no majority for him.”
Menachem Klein, a professor at Bar Ilan University, said: “Netanyahu will do whatever he can in order to escape an indictment.” Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said at the end of February that he intends to press charges against Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust, pending a hearing.
If Netanyahu is indicted while still in office, it would be the first time in Israel’s history that an indictment has been filed against a sitting prime minister.
However, the law does not require him to resign before a conviction. Klein raised the possibility of the coalition passing a law that would give elected officials immunity from prosecution.
Questioned over whether he would seek such a law in a pre-election interview with Channel 12, Netanyahu said that he had not “got involved” with such efforts, nor did he intend to.
Klein noted that the ultra-Orthodox parties, who today are seen as natural coalition partners for Netanyahu’s Likud, are not likely to object to such a law.
Aluf Benn, editor-in-chief of Israeli daily Haaretz, suggested that Netanyahu and Smotrich would strike a deal in which Netanyahu offers annexation in exchange for immunity from indictment. “In exchange for enacting legislation that in one way or another buries the indictments against Netanyahu, the prime minister will have to coordinate the tarrying ‘deal of the century’ with US President Donald Trump in a manner that enables Israel to declare sovereignty over the settlements,” Benn wrote. — dpa
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