Netanyahu officially resigns as communications minister

Responding to a High Court petition calling for him to step down as communications minister over a criminal investigation into possible collusion with major media outlets, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has officially announced his resignation from the position.

Netanyahu presented his resignation letter before he left the country yesterday for an official visit to Singapore and Australia. The resignation letter, which was made public as part of the state’s response to a High Court hearing, will go into effect tomorrow.

Netanyahu said Friday that he will temporarily give up the Communications Ministry for a period of three months. Speaking to reporters on his flight back from the United States, he said that Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi would replace him for the duration.

Netanyahu gave no reason for his decision, but he has been under increasing pressure to give up the ministry due to a police investigation into allegations that Netanyahu and the publisher of the mass daily Yedioth Ahronoth Arnon Mozes negotiated an illicit quid pro quo deal that would have seen the prime minister pass legislation to hamper a rival daily in return for more favorable coverage from Mozes’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog last month filed a petition with the High Court court demanding Netanyahu be suspended from his ancillary position as communications minister, arguing the latest revelations from the criminal investigations into Netanyahu disqualify him from holding the post.

Speaking his weekly faction meeting and holding up a letter of the resignation, Herzog says that “this is just the first stage, next it will be a letter of resignation as prime minister.”

— Raoul Wootliff