Typically, Netanyahu delayed.
Mandelblit then sent a letter to Netanyahu’s attorneys explaining that the prime minister would not be allowed to participate in the appointment of law enforcement officials, including a police commissioner, an attorney-general, judges in the Jerusalem District Court where his trial is ongoing, and more.
A conflict-of-interest settlement for a prime minister on trial for corruption was not only logical, but also needed. Every decision a prime minister makes while on trial is by nature suspect. Mandelblit was trying to minimize the damage to Israel’s sensitive democratic and social fabric.
As expected, Netanyahu rejected the agreement and refused to sign it. A petition was filed to the Supreme Court, and there too Netanyahu argued that he should not be bound by such restrictions. The court heard him, debated, and delivered its decision at the end of March, ordering Netanyahu to comply with the agreement drafted by Mandelblit.
Did he ever sign it? You already know the answer. Does he comply with it? You know that answer too.
And if you needed a reason to understand why such an agreement was needed to begin with, just look at what we experienced on Tuesday, when Netanyahu flagrantly violated the law inside the cabinet and tried to steal the illegal appointment of a justice minister.
Israel had not had a justice minister for a month, an unprecedented situation in the country’s 73 years. A justice minister, it is important to note, is not just any cabinet minister. The justice minister fulfills a number of critical roles, and the failure to appoint someone so important fundamentally undermines the judicial and legislative processes of the country.
It is the justice minister, for example, who must sign off on any government-backed bill brought to the Knesset; who convenes the judicial selection committee to nominate judges; who appoints the state attorney; and who signs extradition orders and pardons.
The justice minister is also a legally required member of the security cabinet, and sits on the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) oversight committee.
The reason Israel didn’t have a justice minister was because Netanyahu refused to appoint one, since under the current coalition agreement with Blue and White (that remains in effect as long as a new government has not been established), Benny Gantz’s party gets the Justice portfolio.
Netanyahu doesn’t want that. He instead wants one of his cronies, a subservient Likud member, to serve as Israel’s top judicial official so he can by proxy appoint a friendly state attorney – that role has been empty since December 2019 – and a new attorney-general when Mandelblit’s term ends in February. A justice minister cannot interfere in ongoing investigations, but the minister does get to decide whom to appoint, and that is crucial for Netanyahu since a new state attorney could potentially slow down his trial, or maybe, if he is lucky, even find a way to stop it completely.
Now tell me there is no conflict of interest.
WHAT IS happening right now in Israel is unprecedented. We have had prime ministers under investigation before. We have even seen prime ministers resign because of criminal investigations.
Netanyahu is the first sitting leader on trial who remains prime minister, and that alone is harmful to our democracy. But what Netanyahu is doing is far worse. He is actively trying to weaken Israel; actively attacking the country from within; and actively trying to undermine the democratic and judicial institutions that are meant to protect us, the country’s citizens.
If Netanyahu had his way on Tuesday, Israel would no longer be a democratic and Jewish state – a status it has always taken pride in. It would be only Jewish.
It is sad to say, but Netanyahu today is a danger to the State of Israel. Even his longtime supporters must recognize that this country is more important than this prime minister. They must know that his fate is not intertwined with ours.
The problem is that some of them refuse to recognize this. There are his mouthpieces in the media, people like Yaakov Bardugo, who has taken over the once admirable Army Radio and turned it into a Netanyahu propaganda station; or so-called journalists like Yinon Magal and Shimon Riklin, who function more like social media jesters for Netanyahu’s royal court.
An independent opinion from any of them is rare to hear. They seem to only know how to read talking points they receive from the Prime Minister’s Office. When Gantz joined Netanyahu and broke off from Yair Lapid last year, the trio praised him for making the mature decision. When Gantz stood up to Netanyahu and demanded that the prime minister abide by the coalition agreement he had signed with his own hand and his verbal promise of “no tricks or shticks,” and pass a state budget during a global pandemic and economic crisis, they attacked the former chief of staff for undermining their leader.
When Naftali Bennett ended the election with seven seats and said he would support Netanyahu, they praised him. But when the same Bennett decided to hold talks with Lapid and Sa’ar, they slammed him for betraying Netanyahu.
And this is what is really sad: they might be just three commentators, but they represent a greater phenomenon that has taken hold not only of large swaths of the Right, but also of the Likud Party. That is the party of the likes of Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, Dan Meridor and others. It used to be a movement that stood for values and ideology, one that had vision.
Instead, the Likud today is bankrupt. It stands for nothing. It has no ideology, no values and no vision. It represents one thing and one thing only: Netanyahu, and how to keep him in power. That no one in the Likud is willing to stand up against him and order him to step aside shows how low this party has stooped.
They are so scared and so deterred that when they hear that Netanyahu is offering the premiership to Gantz, to Bennett, or even to Sa’ar, they stay quiet even though one of them could become prime minister and form a government within a day if Netanyahu simply moved.
But they are afraid.
People like Nir Barkat, once hailed as a visionary mayor of Jerusalem, has gone AWOL. He’s not heard from and not seen.
Avi Dichter, the man who as head of the Shin Bet courageously helped defeat the Second Intifada, has lost his voice.
Tzachi Hanegbi, who as a young student barricaded himself inside a war memorial to try to prevent the 1982 Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, is missing. He used to stand up and fight for beliefs and ideology. Today, he stands for only Netanyahu.
The loss is shared by all of us, something we all see and experience – how Israel is stuck, how it is off track, off balance, confused.
The writing was on the wall. When Netanyahu was indicted in November 2019, it was clear that he would not be able to do what a prime minister needs to do: run the country, while always putting the nation first. It was obvious then that he would always put his own political survival first and before anything else.
What happened on Tuesday was just the latest example. When he refused to pass a budget even though one million Israelis were unemployed, was it not obvious that he did so in order to bring down the government and evade the rotation with Gantz like he had promised?
When Israelis were dying of corona and businesses were shutting left and right, what did Netanyahu do? He went to the Knesset to get himself a tax reimbursement of NIS 1 million. What kind of leader does that? How disconnected can he be?
AS ISRAELIS fight among themselves, the world is moving on. The United States is racing into a new nuclear deal with Iran that seems unstoppable, as illustrated by the statement made after Israel’s national security team held meetings in Washington this week: Israel and the US were setting up a working group to tackle the drone threat from Iran.
Not the nuclear threat. The drone threat.
It would come as no surprise if the Biden administration was using this vacuum to plow ahead with its Iran talks knowing that there is no one in Israel who can resist it. This isn’t 2015, when Netanyahu was a powerful prime minister who stood under the dome of the US Capitol and lobbied Congress against the deal. Today he is too busy fighting Gantz, Bennett and Sa’ar, because they are anyhow a greater threat to him than Khamenei, Rouhani or Zarif.
Iran is not the only challenge that might be falling to the side due to this government’s incompetence. The Palestinian Authority seems bent on canceling its upcoming parliamentary election in May and using Israel’s refusal to allow voting in east Jerusalem as its excuse. Why aren’t we hearing anything about it from Israel? Why is the government not preparing for the international diplomatic onslaught that is just around the corner?
We all know the answer, and we all know what needs to happen. It is time for change in Israel. It needs a new start. It needs new leadership.