Netanyahu even more dangerous as corruption trial nears

When Benjamin Netanyahu eventually leaves politics, hopefully sooner rather than later, his future biographers could spare us from using adjectives such as humble, remorseful, selfless or reflective, in favor of shameless, audacious, self-serving and, above all, harmful to his own country and its neighbors.
Alex Gibney, who produced “The Bibi Files,” a documentary based on leaked footage from Netanyahu’s police interviews, remarked: “I’ve never seen the depth of moral corruption as I’ve seen in this man.” The documentary cannot be screened in Israel for legal reasons and Netanyahu, in his despair, has made an unsuccessful attempt to block it from being screened internationally.
It is another reason why the Israeli prime minister is so desperate to delay, indefinitely if possible, giving evidence in his corruption trial, thus saving himself the embarrassment and humiliation of being questioned by the prosecution on the very issues in this police investigation that he wanted to never see the light of day.
The first revelations of Netanyahu’s allegedly corrupt behavior emerged as far back as late 2016. Eight years later, and four and a half years into this trial, a verdict is not even close. In such a high-profile legal affair — in which the serving prime minister is indicted on three cases of bribery, fraud and breach of trust — the lack of urgency in reaching a verdict, obviously without compromising the defendant’s right to a fair and just trial, is harming the country and society. However, it is Netanyahu and his lawyers who are the chief culprits, delaying proceedings before his indictment and ever since.
Last week, a district court in Jerusalem expressed its exasperation with these delaying tactics and told the prime minister to start giving evidence on Dec. 2, despite another of his pathetic attempts to play the victim card, or in this case the “I am too busy to show up” routine. In this latest instance, Netanyahu’s defense team requested the delay on the grounds that he had been unable to prepare his testimony due to the time pressures of managing a multifront war. The court begged to differ and ruled that it had already given Netanyahu more than enough time to prepare when it postponed the date of his court appearance from July to December, stating that it was “not convinced that a substantial change in circumstances has occurred which would justify a change to the date we set in our (original) decision.”
If the lack of preparation time claim was not convincing, Netanyahu’s lawyers then pulled from their hat a different rabbit: “security” — not the country’s, but his own. They claimed that, for his own protection, he must not be allowed to stay for a prolonged time in the same place in case of an attack. According to the Israeli press, the Shin Bet, the agency in charge of his security, has raised no concerns about his safety during his appearance in court.

Netanyahu should do the decent thing and at least suspend himself from office for the duration of the trial.

Yossi Mekelberg

All of this leads to one conclusion: that Netanyahu, with some help from his lawyers, has given a perfect explanation as to why it is impossible to run a complex country such as Israel, and probably any country, while one is a defendant in a corruption case. After all, this is a case that questions his suitability to be in politics at all, let alone to hold the most powerful position in the country.
He might even be right that Hezbollah or Hamas might target him while he is in court, which could also lead to innocent people losing their lives. He obviously does not want this to happen; after all, he used to be known, at least by his own account, as the “defender of Israel.” However, the conclusion must not be to halt the legal proceedings, which promise to be a highly embarrassing affair for him. They will lay bare, in the full glare of publicity, his relationships with several very wealthy men with clear business interests in Israel, whom he could have potentially “helped” and who, allegedly in return, showered him and his wife with expensive presents and favorable coverage in their media outlets.
After all, who would like to be in this position? Yet this is the law, and it must be applied equally to all. Hence, the interests of the country will not be served by endless delays to the court’s procedures.
In the meantime, it is of paramount importance that Israel is not left in the hands of a prime minister with split attention while the country is embroiled in a war on as many as seven fronts. Instead, he should do the decent thing and at least suspend himself from office for the duration of the trial. And if he will not, there is a provision in Israel’s Basic Law, which has a near-constitutional standing, of incapacitation: “Should the prime minister be temporarily unable to perform his duties, his position shall be filled by the acting prime minister.”
Netanyahu would not trust anyone to replace him for any length of time, as he knows that they would be after his job permanently. Hence, it is for the attorney general to request the Supreme Court to declare Netanyahu incapacitated. And a major reason for such a move is that there would be a bigger danger looming: of Netanyahu staying in power while his trial continues and that he might see that his best chance of escaping justice was to escalate at least one of the war fronts that Israel is fighting on, thereby engineering a worse emergency.
One cannot rule out such a possibility, considering Netanyahu’s deceptive character. There are too many indications that decisions on a ceasefire with Hamas have been marred by Netanyahu’s wish to cling to power. And his request to delay giving evidence in court while the war is still raging raises the suspicion that it is ulterior motives and not the interests of the country that are dictating his actions.
As times goes by, Netanyahu’s tricks to prolong his trial have become toxic, sucking the last drop of energy out of Israel’s political system and society. But for the first time in this case, the judges have been firm with the PM and his lawyers. It might also be time for the attorney general to use her legal powers and declare Netanyahu unfit for office, not only for the sake of Israel’s democracy and transparency, but also to prevent him from leading the country into even more dangerous military adventures.

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg