Calls for Netanyahu’s resignation mount
ISRAELI police yesterday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bribery charges related to a corruption case involving Israel’s telecoms giant, prompting immediate calls for his resignation.
Police say their investigation has established an evidentiary foundation to charge Netanyahu and his wife Sara with accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust. The case revolves around suspicions that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bezeq telecoms company in exchange for positive coverage of the prime minister on Bezeq’s subsidiary news website, Walla.
Police have already recommended indicting Netanyahu on corruption charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends and the second over alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a newspaper in return for positive coverage.
The PM has denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the accusations as a witch-hunt orchestrated by the media.
“The police recommendations regarding me and my wife don’t surprise anyone,” Netanyahu said.
“These recommendations were decided upon and leaked even before the investigation began.”
The Bezeq case, known as Case 4 000, is the most serious of all those of which Netanyahu has been accused. Two of his top confidants have turned state witnesses and are believed to have provided police with incriminating evidence. Netanyahu held the government’s communications portfolio until last year and oversaw regulation in the field. Former journalists at the Walla news site have attested to being pressured to refrain from negative reporting of Netanyahu.
Police say the investigation, which included the testimony of 60 witnesses, revealed that Netanyahu and Bezeq boss Shaul Elovitch engaged in a “bribe-based relationship”.
From 2012 to 2017 the PM and his associates “blatantly intervened” on a near-daily basis in the Walla news site, using the connections with Elovitch to influence appointments and to promote flattering articles and pictures while quelling critical stories of the prime minister and his family, police said.
Police are also recommending charges be brought against Elovitch and members of his family.
“The most serious bribery case yet leaves no room for doubt: a prime minister who is accused of the most serious offence for a public servant in the Israeli rule book cannot keep serving one minute longer,” said Tamar Zandberg, head of the dovish opposition Meretz party. “The prime minister has no moral mandate to keep his seat and must resign today. Israel must go to elections.”
Other opposition figures, including opposition leader Tzipi Livni, joined the call for him to resign.
Netanyahu’s Likud party colleagues have attacked outgoing police commissioner Roni Alsheikh for releasing the recommendation on his last day in the job.
Other coalition partners said they would await a formal decision by the attorney-general to press charges but the latest development further threatens the wobbly government, already weakened by the recent departure of defence minister Avigdor Lieberman.