Labor chief: Netanyahu must resign in light of probes

Labor party leader Avi Gabbay called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign Tuesday in light of a police recommendation he be indicted for bribery in two separate corruption cases and amid other investigations surrounding the nation’s leader.

“We are in a real war against corruption. It touches every citizen of Israel,” Gabbay said at an energy conference in Tel Aviv. “A judge who does not act in accordance with the rules will no longer be able to extend detention to anyone — just as a prime minister with recommendations for bribery cannot continue his job.”

Gabbay’s comments came amid allegations that a judge in a corruption case involving Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecommunication provider, colluded with an investigator. Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on Monday vowed the judge in the case would be dismissed if the allegations were corroborated by legal authorities probing the incident.

“There is no Israeli citizen who is above the law and immune to it — whether he is a prime minister or a judge in the court,” Gabbay added. “The corruption that we have discovered in recent months is shocking, outrageous and disturbing, a bad culture that has penetrated deeply into the institutions of the state. The war on corruption cannot be selective — you are either in favor of the rule of law or you are against it.”

Corruption, he said, must be eradicated “by the roots.”

Netanyahu was named Tuesday as one of the people believed to have been involved in bribery as part of an illicit deal with the communications giant Bezeq, in a first official on-record statement implicating him in the so-called Case 4000 corruption investigation.

Speaking at a hearing in which Shaul Elovitch and Nir Hefetz — the majority shareholder of Bezeq and a former media adviser for the prime minister, respectively — appealed their continued detention in the case, state prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh of the Israel Securities Authority said that in his role as communications minister, Netanyahu was at the center of “a very grave instance of giving and taking bribes.”

The prime minister is expected to be questioned in the case on Friday, “possibly” even under caution as a criminal suspect, a source familiar with the investigation told The Times of Israel earlier this week. The recent developments come just weeks after the police recommended indicting Benjamin Netanyahu for bribery in two separate corruption cases.

Shaked, from the right-wing Jewish Home party —  said at the conference that for the good of democracy, investigations should not be used as a political tool, and urged all parties to wait for the attorney general’s decision regarding whether Netanyahu should resign or not, in light of the investigations. “By law, a prime minister needs to resign only after he is finally convicted,” she said.

Shaked added that government coalition members were working well together and predicted the government would serve out its full four-year term, until 2019.

State witnesses are an essential tool for prosecutors to do their work, she said, in answer to a question, but people in positions of trust should not be secretly recording their bosses. “That is despicable.”