Herzog calls on Netanyahu to accept his proposal for plea bargain talks

President Isaac Herzog calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team to join talks over a plea bargain for the premier’s corruption trial.

Last month, Herzog proposed that he mediate negotiations over a plea deal between Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and Netanyahu’s lawyers. The attorney general agreed to enter such discussions without preconditions earlier this month.

Netanyahu’s legal team has yet to respond to the proposal. Herzog’s statement, which doesn’t mention Netanyahu by name but calls on his team to accept the offer.

“Once one side has said it is willing to come into the room, I also expect the other side to come into the room,” says Herzog at the President’s Conference for a Shared Israeli Future.

Herzog says he has called for dialogue and “an arrangement” over Netanyahu’s trial, “because I truly believe that in these weighty issues, which scorch the heart of Israeli society and divide it, the right path, as much as possible, is to reach understandings and agreements—and I believe in understandings and agreements.”