JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pleaded not guilty on Monday, when his trial on corruption charges was resumed in a Jerusalem court just weeks before the national elections, in which he hopes to extend his 12-year rule. years.
Netanyahu was indicted last year for fraud, breach of trust and taking bribes in three separate cases. In the past few months, Israelis have held weekly protests asking him to drop the charges and criticizing his government’s response to the coronavirus crisis. Protesters gathered outside the courtroom could be heard inside the room where the hearing was being held.
He is accused of accepting lavish gifts from wealthy friends and offering favors to powerful media moguls in exchange for favorable coverage of him and his family.. The last hearing was postponed last month due to restrictions on blocking public meetings.
Israel’s oldest leader is also the first prime minister to go on trial for corruption. Israeli law requires cabinet ministers to resign when accused of crimes, but does not specifically address the case of a prime minister under indictment.
Netanyahu denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the charges against him as a “witch hunt” orchestrated by biased police and media. He refused to resign and used his position as an aggressive pulpit against critics and the criminal justice system.
At Monday’s hearing, Netanyahu’s lawyers filed a written response pleading not guilty. They then argued against the cases for procedural reasons, saying that the attorney general did not properly approve the written investigations.
After about 20 minutes, Netanyahu left the court without explanation and his entourage left.
The hearing continued in his absence, with his lawyers arguing for more than an hour that constitutional procedures were not followed. The judges seemed skeptical and repeatedly asked defense lawyers to end the matter. The prosecution then rejected those arguments, saying that the attorney general had approved the investigations in dozens of meetings.
Outside the courtroom, some 150 protesters shouted at Netanyahu. Many carried banners with the words “Minister of Crime”.
“We want a new government, a clean government, without corruption,” said Sharon Sagy, a protester, “We don’t want Bibi Netanyahu, we want him to go, he needs to go,” she said, using her nickname.
At the start of his trial last May, Netanyahu was flanked by a cohort of Likud party allies while protesting against the media, the police, judges and prosecutors. He said the trial aimed to “depose a strong, right-wing prime minister and thus remove the nationalist camp from the country’s leadership for many years”.
Netanyahu has served as Israel’s prime minister since 2009 and, in the past two years, has managed to stay in power through three tumultuous and dead-end elections. His fragile government coalition collapsed in December and he now faces a major battle for re-election in the March 23 parliamentary elections.
Netanyahu hopes to campaign to get the country out of the pandemic through one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in the world. He is proud to have personally insured millions of doses from major drug makers, allowing Israel to vaccinate more than a third of its 9.3 million population. He hopes to vaccinate the entire adult population by the end of March.
But his government has faced strong criticism for other aspects of its response to the crisis. The country is only now beginning to emerge from its third national blockade, and the closures have caused unemployment to skyrocket.
An emergency government formed last May to combat the coronavirus outbreak is mired in discussions. The country’s leaders have struggled to enact consistent policies and repeatedly accuse each other of making politics out of the pandemic. Meanwhile, Israel has reported nearly 700,000 cases since the outbreak began, including 5,121 deaths.
A major controversy concerns Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, many of whom openly disrespected restrictions on public meetings. Netanyahu will need ultra-orthodox parties to form a government coalition, and his critics accuse him of turning a blind eye to the violations.
Research shows that Netanyahu’s Likud won the most seats, but struggles to form a 61-seat majority coalition in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. The margin of victory can be extremely narrow, potentially allowing a small marginal party to decide who heads the next government.
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Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed to this report.