Netanyahu in court as parties debate his fate
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial resumed Monday, with a key witness painting a picture of an imageobsessed Israeli leader forcing a prominent news site to flatter his family and smear his opponents.
The testimony came as Netanyahu’s chances of securing another term in office following last month’s parliamentary elections appeared to be dwindling in highstakes political talks hosted by the country’s figurehead president just a few miles away.
In a nationally televised address, Netanyahu accused prosecutors of persecuting him in an attempt to undermine the will of the voters and to drive him out of office.
“This is what a coup attempt looks like,” he said.
Taken together, the court testimony and political consultations pointed to an increasingly uphill struggle for Netanyahu as he fights for his political life.
In a postelection ritual, President Reuven Rivlin was consulting with the various parties elected to parliament before choosing a candidate to form a new government. With both Netanyahu and his main rival, Yair Lapid, failing to gain the support of a majority of lawmakers, Rivlin faces a difficult task, and the country risks plunging into an unprecedented fifth consecutive election campaign in the coming weeks.
The consultations “make it more difficult for the president to give the mandate to Netanyahu,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute. He said it was “very clear that Netanyahu is not close” to assembling a majority in the 120seat Knesset.
Netanyahu has been charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. Monday’s proceedings, the first in two months, marked the beginning of the evidentiary phase, in which a long line of witnesses are to take the stand against the prime minister.
The session focused on the most serious case against Netanyahu — in which he is accused of promoting regulations that delivered hundreds of millions of dollars of profits to the Bezeq telecom company in exchange for positive coverage on the firm’s popular news site, Walla.
Ilan Yeshua, Walla’s former chief editor, described a system in which Bezeq’s owners, Shaul and Iris Elovitch, repeatedly pressured him to publish favorable things about Netanyahu and smear the prime minister’s rivals.
The explanation he was given by the couple?
“That’s what the prime minister wanted,” he said.
Outside the courtroom, dozens of supporters and opponents of the prime minister gathered to protest amid a heavy police presence, highlighting Israel’s deep divisions.