Bibi defied conflict of interest rule: AG

JERUSALEM: Israel’s attorney general on Friday warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he has violated the Supreme Court’s conflict of interest ruling, which barred him from direct involvement in his government’s divisive plans for a judicial overhaul.

Netanyahu’s far-right government has barrelled ahead with plans to weaken the Supreme Court and grant politicians less judicial oversight in their policymaking despite massive protests from across Israeli society — including an uproar among business leaders, top legal officials and military reservists.

On Thursday, just hours after his coalition passed a law that would protect the Israeli leader from being deemed unfit to rule because of his corruption trial and claims of a conflict of interest, Netanyahu defiantly pledged to proceed with the overhaul.

Netanyahu contended that stripping the attorney general of the power to remove him from office was necessary to clear the way for him to participate in the negotiations on the judicial overhaul in spite of her instructions, and try to “mend the rift” in the polarised nation.

“Until today my hands were tied,” Netanyahu said in a prime-time TV address Thursday, referring to the change in the law on removing a prime minister.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara thoroughly disagreed, sharply criticising him in a letter Friday for violating a conflict of interest agreement that had allowed him to continue leading the country while charged with corruption, bribery and breach of trust.