Netanyahu requests a pardon during the Israeli prime minister’s ongoing corruption trial

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu on Sun­day asked the coun­try’s pres­i­dent to grant him a par­don from cor­rup­tion charges, seek­ing to end a long-run­ning tri­al that has bit­ter­ly di­vid­ed the na­tion.

Ne­tanyahu, who has been at war against Is­rael’s le­gal sys­tem over the charges, said the re­quest would help uni­fy the coun­try at a time of mo­men­tous change in the re­gion. But it im­me­di­ate­ly trig­gered de­nun­ci­a­tions from op­po­nents, who said a par­don would weak­en de­mo­c­ra­t­ic in­sti­tu­tions and send a dan­ger­ous mes­sage that he’s above the rule of law.

Ne­tanyahu had sub­mit­ted a re­quest for a par­don to the le­gal de­part­ment of the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, the prime min­is­ter’s of­fice said in a state­ment. The pres­i­dent’s of­fice called it an “ex­tra­or­di­nary re­quest,” car­ry­ing with it “sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions.”

Ne­tanyahu is the on­ly sit­ting prime min­is­ter in Is­raeli his­to­ry to stand tri­al, af­ter be­ing charged with fraud, breach of trust and ac­cept­ing bribes in three sep­a­rate cas­es ac­cus­ing him of ex­chang­ing fa­vors with wealthy po­lit­i­cal sup­port­ers. He hasn’t been con­vict­ed of any­thing.

Ne­tanyahu re­jects the al­le­ga­tions and has de­scribed the case as a witch hunt or­ches­trat­ed by the me­dia, po­lice and ju­di­cia­ry.

Trump’s re­quest

His re­quest comes weeks af­ter U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump urged Is­rael to par­don Ne­tanyahu. Ear­li­er this month, Trump al­so sent a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Isaac Her­zog call­ing the cor­rup­tion case “po­lit­i­cal, un­jus­ti­fied pros­e­cu­tion.”

Her­zog is a for­mer po­lit­i­cal ri­val of Ne­tanyahu, but the men have a good work­ing re­la­tion­ship.

In a video­taped state­ment, Ne­tanyahu said the tri­al has di­vid­ed the coun­try. He al­so said the re­quire­ment that he ap­pear in court three times a week is a dis­trac­tion that makes it dif­fi­cult for him to lead.

“The con­tin­u­a­tion of the tri­al tears us apart from with­in, stirs up this di­vi­sion, and deep­ens rifts. I am sure, like many oth­ers in the na­tion, that an im­me­di­ate con­clu­sion of the tri­al would great­ly help to low­er the flames and pro­mote the broad rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that our coun­try so des­per­ate­ly needs,” he said.

Case de­lays

Ne­tanyahu has tak­en the stand mul­ti­ple times over the past year. But the case has been re­peat­ed­ly de­layed as he has dealt with wars and un­rest stem­ming from the Hamas-led mil­i­tant at­tacks on south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7, 2023.

Ne­tanyahu’s par­don re­quest con­sist­ed of two doc­u­ments: a de­tailed let­ter signed by his lawyer and a let­ter signed by Ne­tanyahu. They’ll be sent to the Jus­tice Min­istry for opin­ions and will then be trans­ferred to the le­gal ad­vis­er at the pres­i­dent’s of­fice, which will for­mu­late ad­di­tion­al opin­ions for the pres­i­dent.

Le­gal ex­perts say the par­don re­quest isn’t able to stop the tri­al.

“It’s im­pos­si­ble,” said Emi Pal­mor, for­mer di­rec­tor-gen­er­al of the Jus­tice Min­istry.

“You can­not claim that you’re in­no­cent while the tri­al is go­ing on and come to the pres­i­dent and ask him to in­ter­vene,” she said. The on­ly way to stop the tri­al is to ask the at­tor­ney gen­er­al to with­hold the pro­ceed­ings, she said.

In rare cas­es, the sys­tem could par­don Ne­tanyahu. Ex­perts say the pres­i­dent has broad dis­cre­tion to grant one, and over­sight is lim­it­ed.

How­ev­er, “as a rule, the pres­i­dent re­views a par­don re­quest on­ly af­ter all le­gal pro­ceed­ings have end­ed. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of a pre­con­vic­tion par­don … is ex­treme­ly rare,” the Is­rael Democ­ra­cy In­sti­tute wrote ear­li­er this month. “A par­don be­fore con­vic­tion, while le­gal pro­ceed­ings are on­go­ing, threat­ens the rule of law and se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mines the prin­ci­ple of equal­i­ty be­fore the law.”

Ne­tanyahu por­trays him­self as vic­tim

In 2008, as op­po­si­tion leader, Ne­tanyahu called on then Prime Min­is­ter Ehud Olmert to step down as he faced a grow­ing cor­rup­tion scan­dal. At the time, Ne­tanyahu said that a prime min­is­ter “up to his neck” in scan­dal did not have a man­date to lead the coun­try, and there was a risk that Olmert would make de­ci­sions that served his per­son­al in­ter­ests and not those of the na­tion.

Olmert re­signed even be­fore he was in­dict­ed that year and would lat­er serve 16 months in prison.

Ne­tanyahu has struck a dif­fer­ent, de­fi­ant tone since his own le­gal prob­lems be­gan. He has por­trayed him­self as the vic­tim of a “deep state” con­spir­a­cy try­ing to oust him from of­fice.

Short­ly af­ter form­ing his cur­rent gov­ern­ment in late 2022, Ne­tanyahu launched a plan to over­haul Is­rael’s jus­tice sys­tem.

Ne­tanyahu pre­sent­ed the plan as a much-need­ed re­form. But his op­po­nents ac­cused him of try­ing to weak­en the jus­tice sys­tem, dam­ag­ing the coun­try’s sys­tem of checks and bal­ances and hav­ing a con­flict of in­ter­est at a time when he was on tri­al.

The plan trig­gered large street protests against the gov­ern­ment, and crit­ics have said the deep di­vi­sions sent a mes­sage of weak­ness to Is­rael’s en­e­mies that en­cour­aged Hamas to launch its 2023 at­tacks.

Ne­tanyahu’s re­quest al­so sparked back­lash on Sun­day, with an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the op­po­si­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy groups urg­ing the pres­i­dent not to give in to his re­quest.

“You can­not grant him a par­don with­out an ad­mis­sion of guilt, an ex­pres­sion of re­morse and an im­me­di­ate re­tire­ment from po­lit­i­cal life,” op­po­si­tion leader Yair Lapid said.

The Move­ment for Qual­i­ty Gov­ern­ment in Is­rael said that grant­i­ng a par­don to a prime min­is­ter ac­cused of se­ri­ous of­fens­es of fraud and breach of trust would send a clear mes­sage that there are cit­i­zens who are above the law.

But some Is­raelis ex­pressed sup­port for Ne­tanyahu’s re­quest.

“Bibi Ne­tanyahu did to­tal­ly the right thing re­quest­ing the par­don,” said Li­or Gal, a Jerusalem res­i­dent, re­fer­ring to the prime min­is­ter by his nick­name. “He de­serves to be par­doned. This chap­ter should be over and to re­main unit­ed peo­ple and car­ry on.”

TEL AVIV (AP)