Once a convicted minister, always a convicted minister?

As more and more information regarding the investigation against Interior Minister Aryeh Deri comes to light, the Hebrew-language papers discuss the possibility that the Shas party leader, who served a prison sentence for graft offenses that took place during his previous tenure as interior minister in the 1990s, will end up in a cell once more.

Deri was questioned on Thursday by investigators from the Lahav Serious Crimes Unit for no less than 11 hours, on suspicion of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust, theft by an authorized person, fraudulent registration, and tax offenses, police said in a statement. Many of the details of the probe, including the identities of some of those arrested, are under a gag order.

“His own enemy,” writes Yedioth Aharonoth contributor Ben Dror-Yemeni, referring to Deri. “It is still unclear what is happening and what is true,” he continues. “We know of the suspicions, and they are serious. Very serious. The presumption of innocence should be applied to everyone, even those who have been indicted in the past. But this time, the excuses won’t help… It is clear from what we already know that something is fishy.”

Deri served 22 months in prison from 2000 to 2002, after he was convicted of taking bribes while serving as interior minister, and returned to politics earlier this decade.

In Israel Hayom, Mordechi Gilat, one of the daily’s analysts, is even less forgiving of Deri’s current alleged misdeeds. “Deri is the same Deri,” he writes. “He who was tainted by so many incidents in the past, he who previously lied and cheated under oath, to the police and in court, cannot change his moral ways. I do not know of any such crook.”

The writers in Haartez shift their focus from Deri to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asserting that the Israeli leader, who too is being investigated by police in connection with several alleged cases of corruption, has received preferential treatment by the state’s law enforcers. Writer Gidi Weitz points to the fact that while Netanyahu and his wife Sara were interrogated on separate occasions by police — at the request of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit — Deri and his wife were questioned at the same time, in order to insure that the couple could not coordinate their responses.

Back in Yedioth, reporter Tova Zimuki highlights the escalating tensions between Supreme Court Chief Justice Miriam Naor and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who are at odds over perceived politicization in the appointment of Supreme Court judges. Zimuki writes that Naor fears Shaked intends to delay appointing Naor’s successor, Esther Hayut, because the minister wants to maneuver to get her preferred choices appointed in place of two other retiring justices. “It seems that the only reason for [Shaked’s decision to postpone the date on which the next Supreme Court chief will be announced is because we could not come to an agreement about the identity of the justices that will enter [the Supreme Court],” Naor wrote in a letter on Monday. The Supreme Court chief has said she believes Shaked is using her power unlawfully, and Naor is considering appealing to the courts in order to counter the minister’s intentions, Yedioth reports.

Israel Hayom presents a survey conducted among West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians, which indicates that a large majority believe that the hunger strike of Palestinian security prisoners that lasted 40 days and ended earlier this week was a failure, and did not help the Palestinian cause. According to the paper, which cites a poll conducted by the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, 70.5% of those surveyed asserted that the strike only achieved the most minimal goals set forth by the security prisoners. The hunger strike, which began on April 17, was called by Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Fatah terrorist and political figure. Barghouti is serving five life sentences for murders committed during the second Palestinian intifada.

“It seems that the Palestinian public is not buying the spin that Barghouti’s confidants were trying to sell them,” an anonymous Israeli official tells Israel Hayom. Israel says it refused to negotiate with the prisoners, noting that many are convicted terrorists and their conditions are in line with accepted norms. The Palestinian prisoners, however, maintained that they only ended the strike after reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Services.