Remarkable turnaround in Netanyahu’s fortunes
Israel’s prime minister, mired in multiple allegations of corruption, has shown how two months is enough time to stage a remarkable turnaround
THE LAST time I spoke to Benjamin Netanyahu was six months ago, in a small conference room at the Savoy in London. He asked me how my biography of him was going and, upon hearing it was coming out in May, said that he had no plans to pay for a copy. Though he expected to get one.
The Israeli Prime Minister is always more accessible when outside Israel. Back in Jerusalem, months or sometimes years can go by without him giving an interview to the Israeli media. Things are different when he’s abroad. Mr Netanyahu feels freer, more in his element as global statesman, released from the constant political pressures of maintaining a fractious coalition.
Over the past year, these frequent trips have become a respite from the never-ending stream of leaks from multiple police investigations into allegations of corruption. So, at some point on most trips, the Israeli journalists are summoned to the hotel for the kind of relaxed briefing that rarely takes place at home.
What ensues is a good-natured tug of war: the Prime Minister wants to focus on his “very important” meetings and how he urged a much tougher line on Iran; the reporters are much more eager to press him on the latest revelations in the police and judicial investigations against him. On this occasion in London, however, Mr Netanyahu had an interesting tidbit on the investigations to offer.
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, he revealed, had told the German government there was no suspicion of any senior officials being involved in bribery in the deal to buy the Israeli navy submarines from a German shipyard. The assurance was necessary as the Germans had announced that, if there was any proof of corruption, the deal would be cancelled.
But this meant the submarines could be built because the most senior Israeli official involved, Mr Netanyahu himself, was not even being considered a suspect. With that, yet another “Netanyahu investigation” had ceased to be.
A few minutes later, in response to another unrelated question, he smiled broadly: “I’m keeping the answer to that for my memoirs — which I intend to write many years from now.” He emphasised the word “many”.
The Prime Minister may have received advanced exoneration in the submarines case but other investigations are still swirling around.
The Attorney General has for months been deliberating over whether to press charges after the police recommended Mr Netanyahu be indicted for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two cases relating to businessmen who are closely linked to him.
Meanwhile, police are still deep into a separate investigation — potentially the most devastating
— on allegations that the Prime Minister directed his right-hand man Shlomo Filber to make regulatory decisions that would benefit Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecoms company. It is claimed that the glowing coverage Mr Netanyahu received from Bezeq’s website Walla! was in exchange for these decisions.
Mr Filber has signed a state wit- ness agreement, as have two other ex-Netanyahu aides, and the Prime Minister himself will soon be questioned by police again — for the ninth time in the past year-and-ahalf. His wife Sara and son Yair have been questioned as well.
The investigators are convinced that the evidence will ultimately result in a series of indictments and that the scrupulous and painstakingly methodical Attorney General will have no recourse but to charge the Prime Minister.
Mr Mandelblit has said in private that, if indicted, Mr Netanyahu cannot remain in office. The Prime Minister is convinced otherwise.
What a difference two months can make. As recently as March, when new revelations were leaking from the police investigation on an hourly basis, there was a feeling that it could not go on for much longer.
Seasoned watchers and even some insiders were blithely predicting that, given his former campaign manager and spin doctor were telling the police everything they knew in return for reduced charges and no jail time, Mr Netanyahu would be forced to resign very soon.
Now, Bibi is riding high again. US President Donald Trump announced the end of the Iran deal and a week later sent his own daughter to inaugurate the new US Embassy in Jerusalem. Vladimir Putin hosted the Israeli Prime Minister in Moscow at the Victory Day parade and hours later turned a blind eye while Israel bombed Iranian positions in Syria.
What other Israeli leader has ever scaled such heights of international recognition?
In April, the opinion polls began to turn against Mr Netanyahu and his right-wing, religious coalition. They indicated that, if elections were held at once, a centrist bloc could triumph, prompting the Prime Minister to end talk of an early vote.
But the polls, too, have turned back in his favour, prompting one senior adviser to say just last week: “Netanyahu wants elections now.”
His only concern is that Likud may now do too well and deprive one of its coalition allies, Shas or Yisrael Beiteinu, of the 3.25 per cent of the vote necessary to elect MPs to the Knesset. He is now trying to push a quick law that would lower that threshold.
The Netanyahu survival plan begins with elections in the second half of 2018. He is convinced that if all his partners cross the threshold, a fifth victory that would equal David Ben-Gurion’s record is assured. The centre-left is too divided and devoid of a credible leader to challenge him.
He believes elections would also preempt the
Attorney General’s decision on the corruption cases and make it much more difficult for a judicial official to challenge an elected leader with a renewed mandate.
Mr Netanyahu is laying down a compelling argument for the Israeli public: If you vote for me and my coalition, how can the police, the attorneys and the media take me down? That would be a coup.
In principle, no one stands above the law. Israel’s courts have demonstrated this by sending a prime minister and a president to prison in the past decade. But this time Mr Netanyahu is convinced it will be different.
He won’t resign because of police recommendations, not even if he is indicted. He is prepared, he has told allies, to fight this through the courts
What other Israeli leader has scaled such heights? Netanyahu wants to call an election at once
while in office, convinced he can prove there was nothing illegal in accepting gifts from “close personal friends” and that the favourable coverage was his due as a successful leader. Why not investigate why other news organisations have been unfairly criticising him?
Mr Netanyahu knows the Attorney General well. He was his cabinet secretary for three years. The last thing Avichai Mandelblit wants is to provoke a constitutional crisis and be remembered as the civil servant who brought down an elected prime minister.
Previous attorneys general were just as hesitant: Elyakim Rubinstein did not press charges on Mr Netanyahu in the Hebron-Bar-On case, nor did Menny Mazuz on Ariel Sharon over the Greek island bribery investigation. Other prime ministers — Yitzhak Rabin in 1977 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 — had been weak and resigned before they could be indicted. But this is not a weak prime minister: he outlasted Barack Obama and can hold out against the Attorney General.
If Mr Mandelblit perseveres, then let them come, Bibi will say. It will be the people against the elites, a leader who won five democratic elections in defiance of the hostile media and plans to remain in office for many years to come, despite the ‘deep state’. Who are they to deny the nation its choice?
Anshel Pfeffer’s ‘Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu’ is published in the UK by Hurst