“The way to try and topple the Likud [party] under my leadership is to divert attention from the central election issue: who will lead the people and the state.” This was what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted this past weekend, Jan. 30, on Facebook in an attempt to deflect public criticism of the way he and his wife managed their household in the prime minister’s official Jerusalem residence. The post was written following several reports in recent days about the couple’s conduct, which grabbed the main headlines in most media and cast a cloud over the Likud’s election campaign.

As mentioned here last week, polls indicate that the Israeli right wing has a strong interest in diverting attention from social-economic concerns, those that most occupy the Israeli voter. The deaths of two soldiers on Mount Dov on Jan. 28 and the undermining of stability on the Lebanon border intensified the criticism against the Jan. 18 attack on the Golan, attributed to Israel, in which an Iranian general and the son of Imad Mughniyeh were killed. Netanyahu’s controversial plan to address a joint session of Congress on March 3 diverted the election agenda from the negative campaign against the “anti-Zionist left” to stinging criticism of what has been termed “a diplomatic terror attack” on Israel’s relationship with the world’s most important power. The third damaging issue for the Likud to hit the headlines again is the affair known as “Bibi-Tours,” exposed some three years ago by Channel 10 News analyst Raviv Drucker.

The investigative report of Drucker was based on documents that allegedly proved Netanyahu and his family members enjoyed travel, expensive hotel stays and prestigious dining at the expense of foreign businessmen during the period he served as finance minister (2003-2005). In September, Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein announced that he was shutting down the investigation after no evidence was found of criminal wrongdoing.

At the same time, it seems that an annual report compiled by State Comptroller Joseph Shapira concerning the expenditure of the prime minister's residence has been gathering dust on the desk of the comptroller since August 2014. A source familiar with the case told Al-Monitor this week that such inquiries could be completed at most within three months. At the end of the week, after a series of critical articles about the delay in publication of the report, the comptroller denied that he had promised Netanyahu’s attorneys to postpone publication until the election was over.