Netanyahu might be pardoned but never forgiven

For a split second, when the breaking news of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to be pardoned by the Israeli president of charges in his corruption trial flashed on my phone’s screen, I thought that at last the Israeli leader had seen sense and understood that the only guaranteed way for him to avoid conviction was to admit at least some guilt and walk toward the sunset of his political life. Was I naive? Was it wishful thinking? Maybe both, although, having observed his behavior throughout his political career, I should have known better.

In his more than 100 pages of argumentation why he should be pardoned, accompanied by a recorded message, there was no trace of regret, remorse, contrition, or admission of guilt, which could have started the process of liberating first and foremost his people from the destructive hold he has on them and the country. Nor did he outline any path toward leaving politics.

Netanyahu did not genuinely request a pardon — he demanded, and on shaky legal grounds, that his court case be stopped. There is only one case in Israel’s legal history in which the president granted a pardon before a trial concluded, and that was when operatives of Shin Beit, Israel’s internal security service, were charged with murdering two Palestinian militants who hijacked a bus, and for Shin Beit’s cover-up of the murder. It was impossible to justify the lenient approach, then, but at least all those involved were forced to leave the service, including the organization’s head. Interestingly enough, the president at the time was Chaim Herzog, father of the current President, Isaac Herzog.

After all, one can be pardoned only if one is convicted; if a trial is stopped, there is no conviction, and the defendant walks free, although the court of history would most likely take a dim view of both the pardoned and the pardoner.

In their arrogance, Netanyahu and his lawyers do not give the president and the team at the Justice Ministry that handles such requests the slightest legal or moral justification to accept his request. Instead, we are witnessing a shameless, cynical and manipulative last stand by a defendant in three cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, attacking those who investigated him and those who charged him in these cases, while questioning his judges’ fitness to oversee his case. This unrestrained attack on those in charge of law and order suggests that the prime minister and his legal team are not entirely convinced he could win this court case, and instead, he is falling back on what he does best: demagogy, dishonesty, and disseminating fear and lies.

Netanyahu is correct in one of his contentions: that the burden of appearing in court several days a week while serving as prime minister is both physically and mentally too demanding, and so he cannot do both. This is precisely what he was told by many, including those who appealed to the Supreme Court of Justice, to suspend himself from office for the duration of his trial, a request the court did not accept. One suspects that, in hindsight, the judges in this case must regret their decision. The answer to the inability to be both defendant in a corruption trial and serving as prime minister is not to abolish justice, but to put Netanyahu on extended leave until he clears up his legal affairs.

Netanyahu’s alternative to remorse is blackmailing the president and the nation by warning them that there is only one path to end the divisions and discord in Israeli society, and this is by declaring him innocent. In other words, if the legal proceedings against him do not stop immediately, society will tear itself apart, and guess who will be behind it? The request to pardon him for the sake of the country is hypocritical, as no one has contributed to the polarization of the nation more than he, including legitimizing the most extreme elements in Israel’s political and social life, and bringing them to the heart of Israel’s political system and decision-making process.

The brazen request to stop the trial was an opening gambit.

Yossi Mekelberg

If Netanyahu succeeds in his latest manipulative move to end his corruption trial, he will further divide society, and one can envisage people returning to the streets in their hundreds of thousands in protest. Moreover, it would give him even more of a sense of authoritarian invincibility, while at the same time making him a pariah in some quarters of Israeli society and abroad. This would result in his further reliance on the far-right messianic and ultra-orthodox elements in his government, which would mean a further expansion of settlements, more oppression in the Palestinian territories, the perpetuation of the occupation, and continuing the aggressive foreign policy toward neighbors.

Most likely, the brazen request to stop the trial was the opening gambit in negotiations between the two institutions of the prime minister and the president on the terms of any so-called pardoning of Netanyahu. If Herzog accepts Netanyahu’s demands as presented in the first instance, he will fatally wound the principles of the supremacy of the rule of law and the equality of everyone in the eyes of the law, and in the process legitimize corruption as a way of life in government.

Allowing Netanyahu to stay in power would also mean burying the establishment of an independent state inquiry into the disaster of Oct. 7, 2023, which happened on his watch, and for which he blames the military, the other security forces, those who opposed his assault on the judiciary, and his political opponents. He conveniently forgets that he was the prime minister on that terrible day and for most of the 15 years before it.

There has been more than convincing evidence over the years that Netanyahu is not fit to govern, and even more so since he formed his latest coalition government three years ago. Yet, in his latest act, in which he presents himself as above the law and as an irreplaceable leader without whom the country could hardly have a future, he has shown disrespect for the law and the state’s democratic institutions, and contempt for the intelligence of the Israeli people. For this alone, not to mention all his many past sins and misdemeanors against them, he must vacate the prime minister’s office and be banished from political life.

Only this could start the healing process that the nation so desperately needs and bring about a government that would aspire to live in peace with its neighbors both close and far from home, although this process might well take more than one election.

• Yossi Mekelberg is professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg