Gantz vows to stop PM from avoiding prosecution

Gantz will formally become opposition leader shortly after the new Knesset is sworn in on April 30.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Gantz vows to stop PM from avoiding prosecution, April 23, 2019 (Reuters/Marc Israel Sellem)
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz promised on Tuesday to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from passing legislation that could enable him to avoid getting prosecuted in his three criminal cases.
Gantz will formally become opposition leader shortly after the new Knesset is sworn in on April 30. In that role, he intends to highlight Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit’s decision to indict Netanyahu pending a hearing on three counts of fraud and breach of trust and one count of bribery.
Blue and White will fight efforts by Union of Right-wing Parties co-chairman Bezalel Smotrich to pass a bill that would enable Netanyahu to have automatic immunity from prosecution in all three cases.
“Forming a government whose entire goal is providing immunity [is unacceptable],” Gantz wrote on social media. “[So is] employing [disgraced former Netanyahu chief of staff] Natan Eshel against all norms, attempts to postpone the hearing, and selling out basic values of democracy. This is so sad and so unsurprising.”
Gantz vowed that Blue and White will “lead a struggle against the attempt by the prime minister to buy himself a coalition as a legal fortress” in the party’s parliamentary work.
“We won’t let it happen,” Gantz said.
Gantz’s number two in Blue and White, Yair Lapid, wrote on social media that “the government will be led not by Likud but by followers of Rabbi Meir] Kahane.”
Lapid said the trade of “immunity for Netanyahu in return for him enabling annexing the West Bank, the cancellation of the Gaza Strip disengagement, reducing the powers of the courts and canceling the state’s democratic structure is good for Netanyahu and Smotrich but very bad for the citizens of Israel.”