The next station of the Israeli attorney general’s Via Dolorosa is the second to last. Avichai Mandelblit is supposed to announce if he will close the investigations into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or put him on trial for one or all of the charges. Sitting on the attorney general’s desk are three police recommendations to try Netanyahu for bribery. This decision will be almost final, since it is subject to a hearing to which Netanyahu will be invited and in which the prime minister and his attorneys will try to convince the attorney general to close the files.

The timing is critical, only a few weeks before elections now scheduled for April 9. It's no wonder Mandelblit is searching high and low for salvation. On Jan. 1, Channel 2 reported that Mandelblit met with a forum that included former attorneys general and state's attorneys to draw on their experience before making a decision. Among his concerns are: Is it appropriate to publicize an important decision like this, before general elections? Would it be viewed as crass political interference, or is perhaps the opposite true? Not to announce something that everyone already knows could be a form of interference too. One way or the other, the situation has turned the April 9 election into one of the most important votes in Israeli history because of its explosive implications.

As expected, Netanyahu and his adherents did nothing to make the attorney general’s life easier. The prime minister, who understands Mandelblit’s internal conflict, convened a press conference in Brazil Dec. 31 and made a shocking announcement: “I won’t resign" if there is an indictment, he said, adding, "I believe that nothing will come of all this. I haven’t changed my mind. … The law does not require that a prime minister resign during the process of a hearing. The hearing doesn’t end until my side is heard. And therefore, it is not logical to open a hearing process before the elections if you can’t finish it before the elections. It is undemocratic.”

The prime minister's target audience was obviously one person: Mandelblit. Netanyahu’s argument does have a certain logic. A hearing could reverse the attorney general’s decision, but it will only take place after the elections. Thus, it is possible that Mandelblit’s announcement could inflict political harm on Netanyahu. For a long time, Netanyahu did not believe that the attorney general, who until recently was the government secretary and one of the prime minister’s close associates, would dare indict him. These words show us that not only Mandelblit, but Netanyahu, too, was forced to cross the Rubicon. The way things look now, there is a reasonable chance that he will drown in it. Netanyahu’s polemics and body language show that he has started to internalize the bad news that Mandelblit is likely to indict him.