Bennett: Change in Israel’s leadership should not be up to Mandelblit

New Right party leader Naftali Bennett on Monday said it should not be up to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to decide whether to change Israel’s leadership.

Though he was careful not to criticize Mandelblit, whose judgement he said two days ago that he trusts, the education minister stressed that Israel’s leadership should ultimately decided by the electorate.

Mandelblit “doesn’t have the power to change the leadership. He has the power to indict or not to indict,” Bennett said at the Institute for National Security Studies’ annual conference in Tel Aviv. “In the end, it’s up to the political arena whether to take that and change the government on the recommendation of one man… The essence of democracy is the will of the people, not the recommendation of the judicial system.”

Bennett was apparently referring to the possibility that political parties could refuse to serve under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if Mandelblit declares his intention to indict him.

“It is not for nothing that the law says a prime minister must only resign if there is a final court verdict against him,” he said. “Many past indictments against senior officials have ended in nothing.”

Still, Bennett would not commit to remaining in a Netanyahu-led government until such a verdict was handed down. “We’re not saying that yet,” he said. “If he is indicted and there’s a hearing, only after that we will decide how to proceed.”

Mandelblit is widely reported to be leaning toward announcing plans to indict the prime minister on bribery charges, pending a hearing, as early as next month. However, a final indictment would only be filed after the hearing process is completed, which could take around a year.

Facing the possibility of an imminent announcement of plans to put him on trial, Netanyahu and his allies have launch a frenetic campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the probes and Mandelblit himself.

Bennett on Saturday said he supported Mandelblit. “He is an honest man, decent, very professional,” he told Channel 12’s Meet the Press. “I trust his judgement.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly accused the media, the left and the police of a conspiracy to bring him down through a political “witch hunt” and of trying to pressure Mandelblit into charging him. He recently also assailed Mandelblit himself.

Netanyahu has not provided proof for his frequent accusations that Mandelblit’s work is affected by outside pressure of any kind.

Bennett also spoke about his December decision to leave Jewish Home and form the New Right, explaining he and ally Ayelet Shaked, the justice minister, who led Jewish Home since 2013, had always sought to “open it up” to a larger share of the electorate, but had failed in doing so.

“We tried several times and, unfortunately, in 2015 and in recent years, it became apparent that it was a religious sectorial party. But that is not our vision,” he said.

Bennett and Shaked have said the New Right has been envisioned as a coming together of secular and religious Jews with a clear right-wing agenda. He said Jewish Home would continue to cater mostly to the religious public.