Netanyahu can stay prime minister for now - High Court

Mandelblit rejected the arguments about incompetence and about Netanyahu being weaker as a transitional prime minister, and called the question of whether he could form a new government theoretical.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
NETANYAHU (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
NETANYAHU
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The High Court of Justice ruled on Thursday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can remain premier for the time being, rejecting one of the petitions seeking his resignation.
A separate petition was recently filed, and it appeared that the second petition is still in play.
The rejected petition, filed by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, sought to have Netanyahu fired for one of three reasons: that he was incompetent; that as a transitional prime minister, the indictment against him obligated him to resign; and that he was prohibited from forming a new government.
Essentially, the petition argued that even a sitting prime minister with a full government in place might need to resign once indicted, as Netanyahu was indicted on November 21, but that Netanyahu is in a weaker legal position since he has no government to hold together.
This argument ran into resistance from Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit.
Though he was the authority who issued the bribery indictment against Netanyahu, Mandelblit also rejected attempts to be the hand that would push the prime minister out of office.
Mandelblit rejected the arguments about incompetence and about Netanyahu being weaker as a transitional prime minister, and called the question of whether he could form a new government theoretical.
He explained that until Netanyahu had 61 MKs supporting him, no legal analysis needed to be performed.
High Court Justices Noam Sohlberg, George Kara and Yosef Elron endorsed Mandelblit’s views on most of these issues.
A separate petition was later filed by hi-tech sector officials demanding that Mandelblit explain whether Netanyahu’s ability to form a government needs to be decided now that a third election is set, such that the public will know if there are limits on Netanyahu when they vote.

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The High Court previously gave Mandelblit until December 18 to respond. The court also fined the Movement NIS 3,000 for failing to wait long enough to receive answers from Mandelblit and Netanyahu on the issues brought before the court.