JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was back in court on Monday for his corruption trial because the country’s political parties wanted to consider whether or not to form the next government after a narrowly divided election. retire to on his legal misery.
Between testimonies in a courtroom in Jerusalem and the consultations at the city’s presidential office, it promised to be a day of extraordinary political drama, sharply focused on Netanyahu’s increasingly desperate attempts to stay in power.
He is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and has remained in power in less than two years through four difficult elections, even though he has faced allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The March 23 election was largely a referendum on his leadership, but did not deliver a clear verdict.
Meanwhile, Israel’s political parties have begun meeting with President Reuven Rivlin to recommend which candidate should be given the task of forming the next government.
After each election, Israel’s president is responsible for appointing a party leader to form a ruling majority. The decision is usually clear, but Rivlin faces a difficult choice, given the fragmented election results that the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, has divided between 13 parties with broad ideological differences.
Neither Netanyahu’s allies nor his enemies secured a ruling majority. His fate could therefore amount to Naftali Bennett, a former right-wing ally with whom he has forged ties, and Mansour Abbas, the leader of a small Arab Islamic party that has yet to commit itself to pro- or anti-Netanyahu. blocks.
Later Monday, Bennett recommended himself as the next prime minister, deepening Israel’s political stalemate. His right-wing Yamina party was able to serve as a kingmaker, but did not want to take sides.
Yamina has only seven seats in parliament, which makes it a long chance to form a governing coalition. Bennett hopes he can become a consensus candidate who can bridge the deep divide between the rival factions.
Rivlin was quoted earlier by Israeli media as saying he did not see how any governing coalition could be formed and that he expressed concern that Israel would go into a fifth round of elections.
In the Jerusalem District Court, Netanyahu sat with his lawyers while Chief Prosecutor Liat Ben-Ari read out the charges against him.
“The relationship between Netanyahu and the accused has become a currency, something that could be traded,” she said. “The currency can distort the judgment of a civil servant.”
Netanyahu’s lawyers wanted to refute, but were cut off by Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman, who said they had already responded to the charges earlier in the trial. The judge then ordered a brief recess during which Netanyahu left the courthouse.
Outside the courtroom, dozens of supporters and opponents of the prime minister gathered to protest on either side of the building amid heavy police presence, highlighting Israel’s deep divisions. Anti-Netanyahu protesters have been holding weekly protests for months, calling on him to resign.
Just a few kilometers away, a delegation from Netanyahu’s right – wing Likud party formally recommended him in a meeting with Rivlin as prime minister.
Netanyahu is charged with accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust in three cases.
The first involves Netanyahu allegedly receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from wealthy friends, including Hollywood filmmaker Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer. In the second case, Netanyahu is accused of trying to orchestrate positive coverage in a major Israeli newspaper in exchange for distributing a free pro-Netanyahu pony newspaper.
The third, called Case 4000, which will be the centerpiece of Monday’s first testimony, claims that Netanyahu backed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of legislation to the owner of Israeli telecommunications giant Bezeq in exchange for positive coverage on his news website Walla.
Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the charges against him as part of a witch-hunt in the media and law enforcement to oust him. His trial began last year and could last another two years.
In January, prosecutors claimed 315 cases of Walla is requested to amend his coverage so that it was more favorable to Netanyahu and his family. They said 150 of them involved Netanyahu himself.
According to the charges, Shaul Elovitch, CEO of Bezeq, ‘Ilan Yeshua, the former editor-in-chief of Walla, exerted a great and continuous pressure to change articles on the site to meet the demands of Netanyahu and his family.
Yeshua, who took the stand after Netanyahu left, said he regularly received requests from Elovitch and assistants to the prime minister and asked that he smear the prime minister’s political opponents, including Bennett. He passed on the requests to the top editors of the website.
In the internal messages, Bennett is referred to as the ‘naughty religious’, Yeshua said.
According to Israeli law, the prime minister should not resign while under indictment, and Netanyahu has refused to do so. This left the country deeply divided. An emergency government set up last year to tackle the coronavirus crisis was embroiled in political strife and fell apart in less than a year due to the inability to approve a budget.
Netanyahu was succeeded as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, David Ben Gurion,’s founding member of Israel in 2019, after holding office continuously since 2009 and a few years in the 1990s.
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Associated Press author Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed to this report.