On Feb. 13, Israel Police recommended that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted in two cases of bribery. It is now up to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to decide whether to indict, but Netanyahu has already indicated that he will not be leaving office, even if indicted.
When Minister Tzachi Hanegbi was asked in a March 14 Army Radio interview about the fate of the government coalition if the attorney general indicts, he responded that everything would be business as usual. Hanegbi, a former justice minister, deflected the interviewer’s assumption that such a decision by Mandelblit would represent a “crisis,” terming it instead an irrelevant “crossroads” from a legal point of view. According to Hanegbi, the decision to indict would only assume significance after Netanyahu is accorded an official hearing and presented with an array of material and evidence against him. This procedure could take many months, he added.
