Political bombshell shakes Israel

by Hans Lebrecht

This article was reprinted from the April 26, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

TEL AVIV - Suspicions that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used fraud to appoint his friend Roni Bar-On attorney general and the government's legal advisor last January were upheld this week by the current attorney general, Elyakim Rubinstein, and the state prosecutor, Edna Arbel.

But they did not follow the investigation team's recommendation to indict Netanyahu and his Justice Minister Hanegbi, citing insufficient evidence.

Three of the eight prosecutors on the team, however, took a minority position that there was enough evidence to prosecute the prime minister and his adviser.

On the other hand, the leader of the sephardic ultra-orthodox Shass Coalition Party, Arieh Der'i will be indicted for criminal extortion for pressing Netanyahu and the cabinet to appoint Bar-On, threatening that if he did not, the 10 Shass Knesset Members would not support the partial withdrawal from the West Bank town of Hebron as called for in the Oslo Peace Accords. That would have brought down the Netanyahu government.

Bar-On was sworn in Jan. 10, but in the wake of a public uproar over the suspicious way in which the cabinet approved the decision, he resigned the next morning. After the affair became public, Netanyahu appointed the investigative team which issued its 1,000-page report last week. The report stated that Hanegbi and Lieberman should be indicted for fraudulent breach of trust, and Member of Knesset (MK) Der'i for blackmail and threats.

The Attorney General's report said Der'i had made a deal with Bar-On: in exchange for Der'i's support in naming Bar-On attorney general, Bar-On would agree to a plea bargain in Der'i's seven-year-old corruption and bribery trial.

The Shass leading body of rabbis will meet next week to decide whether to remain in the government coalition. If they quit it would leave Netanyahu without a majority in the Knesset.

Netanyahu and some of his closest cronies are toiling to convince the public that the report has proven that the prime minister was innocent as a lamb. Shimon Peres, who remains chair of the Labor Party until June, said after the report's release that for him the possibility of joining Netanyahu in a broad coalition was dead.

A rally at Tel-Aviv's Rabin Square demanded the immediate resignation of Netanyahu as well as new elections. Labor's MK Yossi Beilin and some other Labor MK's, as well as the Meretz chair MK Yossi Sareed, have all filed petitions to the Supreme Court of Justice to indict the prime minister, the Justice Minister and all those whose indictment the report recommended.

Communist Party of Israel General Secretary Muhammad Nafa'a said the Netanyahu government has been exposed as a "corrupt bunch of gangsters" who must be forced to resign. In calling for new elections, Nafa'a said, "Not only in the Bar-On affair has this government failed, but above all it has failed with its whole peace-sabotaging policy, as well as with its anti-labor policy of serving best the big domestic and foreign capital."

The influential Ha'aretz daily newspaper stated in its April 21 editorial, under the headline "The dark spot will not be erased," that the decision not to indict Netanyahu and Hanegbi has not eliminated grave suspicions that they engaged in wrongdoing. Even the usually pro-Netanyahu Jerusalem Post titled its editorial "No clean bill of health."

Netanyahu, educated in the U.S. and for many years Israel's ambassador in Washington, favored a major expansion of presidential powers modeled on the U.S. presidency. But, instead of Abraham Lincoln, he seems to have embraced Richard Nixon as his role model.