Gantz urges Netanyahu to resign rather than be a ‘part-time PM’

Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz opens his first town hall event with a call that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resign due to potential criminal charges against him, which Attorney General Avichai Mandeblit said earlier today could be filed as early as July.

“The announcement of the attorney general of such a short hearing process is no small matter,” he tells some 500 supporters in the southern city of Beersheba.

“We cannot be left with a part-time prime minister.”

In a statement from the Justice Ministry, Mandelblit announced that pre-indictment hearings in the three cases against Netanyahu will be completed no later than three months after the documents are released to prosecutors overseeing the hearings on April 10.

Charging that Netanyahu will have to spend a significant amount of his time fighting the charges in court, Gantz says, “the right thing to do would be if he resigned and showed that the State of Israel came before everything else…If you care about this country, take responsibility for its citizens and stop dealing only with yourself.”

Mandelblit announced last month he intended to indict Netanyahu pending a hearing in three separate criminal cases for fraud, bribery and breach of trust, six weeks ahead of national elections.

“On the prime minister’s agenda is bribery, fraud and breach of trust. His agenda is Netanyahu before everything else. Our agenda is Israel before everything else,” Gantz says to the cheers of the crowd.

Attacking Netnayhu’s claims of a conspiracy and witch hunt against him, Gantz addresses the prime minister: “You have brought all of this on yourself. This was not the work of the head of the police you appointed, nor the head of the state prosecution who you appointed, nor the attorney general who you appointed. None of them. It’s only you.”

— Raoul Wootliff