Ex-chief justice Barak says ‘time is running out’ for plea bargain in Netanyahu trial

Former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak reasserts his support for a plea bargain in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial, but says time is running out on the matter, at a conference marking 30 years since his historic Bank Mizrahi decision in Jerusalem.

“I still think we should go for this. I also said to his representatives who came to speak to me that time is running out for it,” Barak said.

“I am seen in the eyes of the public as an extreme man, but I am a man of compromise, a man of consensus. The moment will come when I, too, will believe that we have progressed so far in the trial, perhaps after the cross-examination, that there will no longer be room for a plea bargain. But as of today, it still needs to be done,” he says.

Barak also expresses concern for the future of Israel’s democracy.

“Unfortunately, we are sliding from the liberal democracy we were in to a rather slippery slope toward an illiberal democracy that will end up as a dictatorship. We are not there; there is still a lot that can be done to stop this, and if it is not stopped, it will be very bad,” he says.

The conference marks the anniversary of the landmark Bank Mizrahi case of 1995, which established the precedent of judicial review over legislation.