Position Papers

It reads and analyzes new issues and anticipates their effects and repercussions, whether on the Israeli scene or on the Palestinian cause.
  • Position Papers
  • 2443
  • Antwan Shulhut

This paper aims to analyze the political reflections following the police recommendation to indict the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to open an investigation against him. Moreover, this paper aims to analyze potential scenarios in the Israeli scene in the upcoming period, which may result either in Netanyahu's fall and the dissolvement of his government and going to early elections, or in the Attorney General of Israel not accepting the police recommendations, thus empowering Netanyahu while legitimizing his discourse of persecution, in which he accuses mainly the media and Israeli traditional opposition elite.

 This paper claims that the future of the current government generally, and Netanyahu future specifically, will not be determined through the investigations and its results, but will basically be determined as a result of the position that will be taken by parties and lists, members of the current governmental coalition. According to this, Netanyahu is preparing the Israeli public opinion in general, and his own electoral base in particular, for a possibility of him not resigning as a Prime Minister according to the Israeli convention that the Prime Minister resigns once recommendations are set to indict him (for example Rabin's resignation in the seventies, and Ehud Olmert's resignation in 2009).

Netanyahu even intends to formulate the public opinion to support him to violate this convention altogether, while sticking to the letter of the law in this context, which allows a Prime Minister to exercise his power even if he was a suspect, until a final judicial decision is took in his regard. According to this, the position of the parties and lists that formulate the government will have critical influence on this issue.

Until this moment, it seems that the right is holding on to Netanyahu at the time as long as the Attorney General is not serving a request of indictment against him. This is a result of political reasons assimilated mainly in Netanyahu's ability to maintain this popularity, which even has risen since the police recommendations were published, and a fear of losing the right's rule, that sees the current historical context an opportunity to fulfill its ideological goals in the long term.