by debkaFile
Since the attorney general announced the indictments last Thursday, one voice after another has candidly proposed circumventing the legal process if that is the only way to remove Netanyahu as prime minister before his day in court.
The shattering indictments for bribery and breach of faith brought
against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu,70, are only one stage in the relentless
campaign to unseat him. His decision to fight for his innocence and win round
the voters in Israel’s third election in a year, in early 2020, has brought down
on his head the full weight of the legal, political and media establishments. They
have no qualms about bending the immunity law to force him to quit office
without waiting for an absolute court judgement of his guilt.
If there was a concerted coup conspiracy to oust
him, as he charges, it is far from over. Since the attorney general
announced the indictments last Thursday, one voice after another has
candidly proposed circumventing the legal process if that is the only
way to remove Netanyahu as prime minister before his day in court. On
Saturday, Nov. 22, a former high court justice, Eliahu Matza, joined the
chorus of law enforcement voices when, in a radio interview, he pressed
the Knesset to refer to the Supreme Court the decision on his
competence to form a government. By law, this is the sole jurisdiction
of parliament.
This was incidentally a sly attempt to exploit the
crisis for promoting the court’s long machinations for asserting its
authority over parliament.
On the political front, the opposition Kahol Lavan,
whose leader Benny Gantz failed to form a new government, like
Netanyahu before him, urged law enforcement authorities to force the
prime minister to give up all his cabinet portfolios.
In answer to this chorus, Netanyahu released a
video statement on Saturday pledging to abide by any court ruling in his
case. “A court of trial is the only framework [for determining guilt or
innocence] from beginning to end,” he said. If this declaration was
intended to counter the charge that by putting up a fight, he was
inciting a civil mutiny, it may have been the right way to go, but is
unlikely to work. The parties who managed to throw him under the
political-legal bus are not about to stop until their work is done and
Netanyahu’s remarkable decade in office is brought to an end.
It is worth noting that the charges brought against
his accused accomplices, Arnon Mozes, of the mass daily Yediot
Aharanot, and the Elovich couple, are more serious that the cases
against the prime minister. Yet they have rated little media notice. PM
Netanyahu is the sole accused. He has only the slimmest hope of
surviving the political bone-crusher smashing into him at every turn.
With each assault, his popular support will melt and his loyalists be
scared off. Shouted down are the voices claiming that all three are
presumed innocent until proven guilty and if an indictment can cause the
removal of a prime minister, then the police and legal authorities have
seized control of government.
Israel’s founding father the late David Ben Gurion
could have warned Netanyahu what was coming from his own experience. At
the end of an epic career, Ben Gurion was challenged by forces
determined to oust him. He fought back by invoking the legal system,
demanding that a commission of inquiry get to the bottom of a failed
clandestine operation. Ben Gurion also called on the voting public to
vindicate him. He called in vain.
Netanyahu may or may not come up with an ingenious device for staying in office. But the way things look at present, he seems to have little choice but to quit politics and devote himself to clearing his name in court – a process that could drag on for years.
debkaFile
Source: https://www.debka.com/pm-netanyahus-chances-of-survival-are-drowning-under-a-concerted-political-legal-media-onslaught/
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