Four years of investigations. Five years of an ongoing trial. Three hundred and thirty-three prosecution witnesses. Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of cigars and champagne were allegedly received.
Finally, on Sunday, the bombshell dropped that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had submitted a formal request for a presidential pardon to President Isaac Herzog, in what the President’s Office described as an extraordinary move with significant implications.
Netanyahu’s attorney, Amit Hadad, delivered the 111-page request to the Legal Department of the President’s Office. Under standard procedure, it has now been transferred to the Justice Ministry’s Pardons Department, which will gather professional opinions from all relevant authorities.
Those assessments will then be forwarded to the President’s Legal Advisor and her team, who will prepare an additional recommendation for Herzog before he makes a final decision.
Sources yesterday told The Jerusalem Post that the estimate is that it will take weeks, even up to two months, to fully examine the request along with its supplementary materials.
And therein lies the rub. Weeks and months. In the world of Israeli bureaucracy, time stretches on in a never-ending cycle of committees, appeals, special requests, and meetings. The trial has been no different.
Many Israelis are frankly fed up with the trial and its length, whatever their personal stance on Netanyahu and his politics. Equally, there are many who wish to see the trial continue until its conclusion.
It was the second request for a pardon after US President Donald Trump took the highly unusual step of sending an official letter from the White House to Herzog, urging him to grant Netanyahu a full pardon from the corruption charges.
For months, Netanyahu said publicly that he would not ask for a pardon if it required admitting guilt. He insisted that the trial was “absurd” and a “witch hunt,” and that he would ultimately be acquitted.
Netanyahu thanks Trump for support, requesting pardon
In interviews and speeches after Trump’s letter, Netanyahu thanked Trump for his “incredible support” but repeated that he would not plead guilty or accept any arrangement that implied wrongdoing.
However, no such admission of guilt came with Netanyahu’s request. So where does that leave the country and its prime minister?
The best conclusion would probably have been the option of a plea bargain, followed by a quiet retreat from political life. But that is not Netanyahu’s style, plus that ship sailed long ago. So is this the second-best option? The truth is, justice should always be played out until the end, in order to guarantee a pillar of Israeli democracy.
For years, however, the Israeli judiciary has come under immense attack for its alleged politicization of legal matters.
As the Post wrote after the trial began, “Watching Israel’s prime minister appear in court on charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust should make all Israelis uncomfortable. At the same time, we should be proud of the fact that we live in a democracy in which all citizens should be treated equally and fairly by the law of the land.”
At that time, on top of being on trial, Netanyahu was attempting to form a government two weeks after the election. In the end, despite winning the most mandates, he failed to do so, leading to the short-lived Lapid-Bennett coalition, which was in essence anti-Bibi.
The judicial hoo-hah contributed, back then, to parties’ being adamant about not sitting in government with Netanyahu. Well, elections are at most 11 months away in Israel.
After two years of trauma, war, death, and incredible pressure across the whole of society, Israelis need to think carefully before choosing the next government. It will have to determine which way Israeli society moves into the future. With the haredi draft and West Bank annexation alone, there are major issues on the table to be faced in the future.
Netanyahu has not shied away from the challenge of standing again for election, but maybe he should not do so again under the shadow of the trial. Maybe it is best to give Israelis the chance to express their views on Netanyahu at the ballot box. Does that mean doing away with justice and laws? No. But after 10 years of this, and moving forward into a post-Israel-Hamas War world, this issue needs to be put behind Israel.