AG said set to tell PM he can’t take back Communications Ministry

But Mandelblit expected to allow Netanyahu to continue handling public broadcasting issue

By Sue Surkes

You will receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

You will no longer receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

2 April 2017, 10:00 am

Edit

Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

File: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, speaks with Tzachi Hanegbi during a Likud Party faction meeting at the Knesset on February 8, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit will reportedly advise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to choose a permanent communications minister, other than himself, at the end of this month, when the temporary appointment of Likud minister Tzachi Hanegbi expires.

Mandelblit is expected to tell Netanyahu that he cannot return to the post, which he has held since 2015, due to a conflict of interest, the Ynet news site reported Sunday.

The Basic Law on the Government also forbids the extension of a temporary ministerial post.

However, it is believed that Mandelblit will allow the prime minister to continue dealing with the future of the veteran Israel Broadcasting Authority and the new public broadcaster, which is not yet on air, on the grounds that it is a general issue unrelated to personal conflicts of interest.

Netanyahu has fought to bury the new broadcaster, Kan, after backing it in its early legislative stages. A new compromise worked out last week with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon will see the broadcaster go on-air on May 15, but without its news division, which will see mass layoffs and will ultimately be operated primarily by workers from the former IBA.

The newly-built control room at the offices of the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, in Tel Aviv. August 29, 2016. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

Netanyahu resigned from the communications post in February amid a High Court petition and a criminal investigation into his alleged collusion with major media outlets.

One of the corruption probes into the prime minister is examining allegations he negotiated for better personal coverage with the publisher of the mass circulation daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in an alleged quid pro quo deal.