Bennett: Police shouldn’t be able to decide when there are elections

Addressing looming police recommendations in the two criminal probes into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett says his coalition party will decide how to proceed only when it has seen the police conclusions.

But, he adds at the weekly Jewish Home faction meeting, “police shouldn’t be able to decide when there are elections.” And he notes that as many as 80 percent of police recommendations for indictment don’t result in an indictment.

In his remarks, Bennett criticizes Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, who has suggested the so-called police recommendations bill — up for its final votes later on Monday — will shield Netanyahu in Case 3000, a fraud probe on the purchase of submarines, in which the prime minister is not a suspect.

The education minister says he voted “wholeheartedly” to buy the submarines and does not believe Netanyahu was aware of the alleged fraud in the purchase. Moreover, the police recommendations law will not apply to existing cases, thus excluding the prime minister in the submarines probe even if he later becomes a suspect, Bennett adds.

The Jewish Home party leader says his party will support the police recommendations law though it isn’t “that important.”

In exchange, he says, the coalition has agreed to pass his Jerusalem law — which will make relinquishing portions of the capital only possible with the support of 80 MKs — into law next week.

— Marissa Newman