Netanyahu requests further delay to pre-trial hearing, citing elections

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has submitted a request to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to once again delay his pre-trial hearing in October, citing Knesset elections the month before.

TV analysts said that Mandelblit was expected to reject the request, given that Netanyahu himself is not required to be present at the hearing, rather only his defense team. The Ynet news site reported that the premier is set to petition the Supreme Court if Mandelblit does indeed reject the request.

Last month, the attorney general agreed to postpone the hearing — originally scheduled for July 10 — to October 2 and 3. Netanyahu’s lawyers had asked for a full-year delay, arguing that the amount of evidence was too large to review in three months, but that request was rejected.

Mandeblit announced in February that he intends to charge Netanyahu, pending a hearing, with fraud and breach of trust in three separate corruption cases, as well as with bribery in one of them

The prime minister has denied any wrongdoing and has claimed the investigations are part of an effort by political opponents to force him from office.

Netanyahu is widely reported to have tried to build a coalition after April 9’s election in which his Likud MKs and their allies would initiate or back legislative efforts to enable him to avoid prosecution — first by easing his path to gaining immunity via the Knesset, and then by canceling the Supreme Court’s authority to overturn such immunity.

The latter change would be achieved as part of a wide-ranging reform of the Supreme Court’s role, under which Israel’s justices would be denied their current quasi-constitutional authority to strike down legislation, and Knesset and government decisions, deemed unconstitutional. Plans for this “override” legislation have been described as marking a potential constitutional revolution that critics warn could shatter the checks and balances at the heart of Israeli democracy.

Last week, as Netanyahu struggled to muster a majority coalition, his associates were said to have warned him that snap elections would likely deny him the time needed to pass legislation shielding him from prosecution.

Nonetheless, when he concluded that he could not muster a majority, he pushed through a vote to disperse the 21st Knesset, which had only been sworn in a month earlier, and set Israel on the path to new elections on September 17. He chose that course rather than allow for a different Knesset member, possibly opposition leader Benny Gantz, to have a turn at trying to build a majority coalition.

After Mandelblit announced his intention to indict Netanyahu, the prime minister’s attorneys requested, and were granted, that the case files not be handed over prior to the April 9 election in order to prevent information from leaking to the media and affecting the vote.

But after the election, the lawyers refrained for another month from collecting the material, citing a dispute over their fees. They have been accused of engaging in delay tactics.

Netanyahu denies all the allegations against him, and has claimed they stem from a witch hunt designed to oust him, which he claims is supported by the left-wing opposition, the media, the police and the state prosecution, headed by a “weak” attorney general.