JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was back in court on Monday for his corruption trial as the country’s political parties were weighing whether to form the next government after a highly divided election or to step down to focus on its legal woes.
Between testimony in a courtroom in Jerusalem and deliberations at the president’s office in the city, it promised to be a day of extraordinary political drama, sharply highlighting Netanyahu’s increasingly desperate efforts to stay in power.
He is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister and has held four hard-fought elections in power in less than two years, even as he faced allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The March 23 elections were largely a referendum on his leadership, but did not yield a clear verdict.
Israeli political parties, meanwhile, began meeting with President Reuven Rivlin to recommend which candidate should form the next government.
After each election, the Israeli president is responsible for appointing a party leader to try to assemble a ruling majority. That decision is usually straightforward, but Rivlin faces a difficult choice given the fragmented election results that divide the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, into 13 parties with wide ideological differences.
Neither Netanyahu’s allies nor his enemies won a ruling majority. So his fate could come down to Naftali Bennett, a right-wing former ally with whom he has tense ties, and Mansour Abbas, the leader of a small Arab Islamist party that has yet to commit to pro- or anti-Netanyahu. blocks
Later on Monday, Bennett recommended himself as the next prime minister, further exacerbating Israel’s political deadlock. His right-wing Yamina party had been able to serve as a kingmaker, but refused to take sides.
Yamina has only seven seats in parliament, making it a long way to form a government coalition. Bennett hopes he can become a consensus candidate who can bridge the deep rifts between the rival factions.
Rivlin was previously quoted by Israeli media as saying he did not see how a ruling coalition could be formed and that he expressed concern that Israel would enter a fifth round of elections.
Netanyahu sat with his lawyers at the Jerusalem court while Chief Prosecutor Liat Ben-Ari read the charges against him.
“The relationship between Netanyahu and the defendants became a currency, something that could be traded,” she said. “The currency can interfere with an official’s judgment.”
Netanyahu’s lawyers tried to file a rebuttal but were cut off by Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman, who said they had responded to the charges earlier in the trial. The judge then ordered a short break, during which Netanyahu left the courthouse.
Outside the courtroom, dozens of the prime minister’s supporters and opponents gathered to protest on either side of the building amid heavy police presence, highlighting Israel’s deep divisions. Anti-Netanyahu protesters have been holding weekly demonstrations for months, calling for him to resign.
Just a few miles away, a delegation from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party formally recommended him as prime minister in a meeting with Rivlin.
Netanyahu has been charged with taking bribes, fraud and breach of trust in three cases.
The former implies that Netanyahu reportedly received gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy friends, including Hollywood film producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer. In the second case, Netanyahu is accused of wanting to orchestrate positive coverage in a major Israeli newspaper in exchange for curbing the spread of a free pro-Netanyahu tabloid.
The third, dubbed Case 4000, which will be the focus of Monday’s first testimony, alleges that Netanyahu backed legislation worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the owner of Israeli telecom giant Bezeq in exchange for positive coverage on its news site Walla.
Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the charges against him as part of a “witch hunt” by the media and law enforcement officials to fire him. His trial began last year and could take another two years.
In January, prosecutors claimed 315 cases from Walla who was asked to change the coverage so that it was more beneficial to Netanyahu and his family. They said 150 of them involved Netanyahu himself.
According to the allegations, Shaul Elovitch, CEO of Bezeq, “put heavy and constant pressure” on Ilan Yeshua, the former editor-in-chief of Walla, to change articles on the website to meet the demands of Netanyahu and his family.
Yeshua, who took the stand after Netanyahu left, said he regularly received requests from Elovitch and the prime minister’s aides asking him to slander the prime minister’s political opponents, including Bennett. He then forwarded the requests to the site’s top editors.
Bennett was called the “naughty religious” in internal reports, Yeshua said.
Israeli law does not require prime ministers to resign while being charged, and Netanyahu has denied this. That has left the country deeply divided. An emergency unit government formed last year to address the coronavirus crisis was stuck in political bickering and fell apart in less than a year over its inability to approve a budget.
Netanyahu overtook Israel’s founder David Ben Gurion in 2019 as the country’s longest-serving prime minister, holding the office continuously since 2009 and for several years into the 1990s.
Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed to this report.