World
Netanyahu tour was delayed by corruption probes
As the Israeli PM visits France and Hungary, back home his troubles are growing
July 18, 2017 16:41
As the Israeli PM visits France and Hungary, back home his troubles are growing
July 18, 2017 16:41Benjamin Netanyahu has not given a proper interview to the Israeli media since winning the 2015 election over two years ago.
Late at night on July 13, two interviewers from Channel 20, an obscure nationalist station owned by a Georgian-Israeli oligarch, were summoned to the prime minister’s residence.
The interview went out just before midnight and was so rushed that the sound-feed could barely be heard. Not that the interviewers’ soft-ball questions mattered: they had been chosen for their known sycophancy.
For the last year, since the allegations of corruption first emerged, Mr Netanyahu’s message has been “there will be nothing, because there was nothing”.
Events of the last two weeks have forced him to update the message. Now, Mr Netanyahu and his band of loyal ministers and MKs, who were summoned earlier in the day for an emergency briefing, are saying that the leftist, “fake news” media is trying to bring down a right-wing leader by non-democratic means. Such was the apparent state of panic that Mr Netanyahu’s planned trip to France was pushed back a day.
The latest developments have occurred in cases in which the prime minister is not — at least, not yet — an official suspect. He has not even been questioned. But the arrest of his personal attorney, David Shimron, in the submarine kickbacks case, and the detention of his campaign manager and now director-general of the Communications Ministry, Shlomo Filber, in the Bezeq security fraud, have dramatically raised the profile of both investigations.
There is still no clear indication that Mr Netanyahu was involved in the alleged bribery over the selection of German warships for Israel’s navy or in the blind eye that government regulators turned to the goings-on in Israel’s largest telecommunications company. But the panicked reaction signals that he fears he could be sucked in.
Meanwhile, there are still two probes in which he has been questioned. There is “Case 1,000”, the long list of gifts Mr Netanyahu and his wife Sara accepted from “close friends”; and “Case 2,000”, the prime minister’s dealings and possible influence-peddling with media moguls.
Mr Netanyahu has already told his confidants that he will not resign should he be indicted. Israeli law allows a prime minister to continue serving even when on trial, but will Likud still stand by him, or the coalition partners?
On Monday it transpired that one of the main suspects in the submarine case was about to become state’s witness. Whatever he has to say on the beneficiaries of the bribes could exonerate the prime minister — or provide the prosecutors with their smoking gun.
