Blue and White and Likud each called for more investigations of the other over the weekend.
Benny Gantz’s party asked Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to probe why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had stock in his cousin Nathan Milikowsky’s company that did business with Thyssenkrup, the German company that sold Israel the submarines that are the subject of Case 3000.
“There will be a state commission of inquiry on the submarine affair,” Gantz said at a Blue and White rally on Saturday night in Kiryat Bialik. “There was either improper work in the decision not to tell the defense minister and IDF chief of staff about selling strategic weaponry to Egypt or the security of the state was harmed on purpose.”
The Likud chose not to respond.
“This is the scandal that should be investigated,” Blue and White wrote on Twitter.
The tweet was a reference to interim State’s Attorney Dan Eldad’s decision to investigate Gantz’s bankrupt former company, the Fifth Dimension. In an interview with Channel 12, Gantz downplayed the probe and said the company was clean. He said he respects law enforcement agencies and that if he or anyone else in his party was indicted while in office, they would quit.
“I cannot ignore the political aroma behind the timing of this probe,” Gantz said. “But I am still looking at the cup as half full. I have no worries about the investigation. I am not a suspect, and I will not be a suspect.”
Netanyahu called upon Gantz on Friday to respond to a series of questions about what happened to the Fifth Dimension, before the March 2 election.
In a video he posted, Netanyahu said Blue and White can no longer talk about clean governance.
“Benny Gantz and the Fifth Dimension company he led are the subject of a serious criminal investigation for misleading the police, got without a tender a contract for NIS 50 million in taxpayer money, never returned the four million shekels they kept and pretended to have a product and customers that do not exist,” Netanyahu said. “This is the only experience of Gantz in civilian life. This is not only criminal, the company also went bankrupt.”
Netanyahu asked Gantz, who is not a suspect in the case, about the NIS 50m. contract and the NIS 4m. that was taken, the company’s incorrect statements about its experience and its product and how he met with then police inspector-general Roni Alsheikh. He also asked if the company provided classified information to officials abroad without permission.
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman told the Meet the Press program on Saturday night that only he, not Gantz, could pose a challenge to Netanyahu. He said Netanyahu was still in politics just to help his legal fate.
“The only reason Netanyahu is running is not to form a government but to seek a plea agreement between the election and the March 17 start of his trial,” he said.
The Likud responded that “Liberman is speaking baseless nonsense, because he is in dire straits politically.”