Knesset to vote on immunity for Netanyahu on Tuesday
Edelstein to boycott proceedings
By GIL HOFFMANPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a cabinet meeting, December 2019.(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
The Knesset plenum will vote on Tuesday to authorize the formation of a House Committee that will formally vote to reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for immunity from prosecution in his criminal cases.Deliberations on immunity will start at 11 a.m. after three votes on technical bills. Blue and White leader Benny Gantz said he would try to arrive from Washington in time for the vote, but he may not make it.Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit will come to the first House Committee meeting on Thursday to present the indictments of Netanyahu and former social welfare minister Haim Katz. MKs will be allowed to ask Mandelblit questions about the indictments.Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein decided not to run the meeting in the plenum and to leave it to his deputies. His decision came after the Likud decided to boycott the event.“We will not participate in this farce,” Likud faction chairman Miki Zohar said Monday. “I very much hope that what really matters is taking place in Washington.”Labor-Gesher-Meretz will symbolically hold its faction meeting on Tuesday in front of the Supreme Court before going to the Knesset and will “vow to defend democracy from the incitement of Netanyahu and the Right.”New MK Yorai Lahav Hertzanu will be sworn in to the Knesset in place of former MK Gadi Yevarkan, who quit to run in the March 2 election with Likud. The appointments of Tzipi Hotovely as diaspora affairs minister, Ophir Akunis as social welfare minister and Tzachi Hanegbi as agriculture minister will be officially announced to the Knesset.Hotovely, the first religious Zionist woman to be in the cabinet, will be sworn in as a minister for the first time.
