Israeli President Isaac Herzog has decided not to issue a pardon to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
The report says that Herzog will instead push for a mediation process to reach a plea deal, quoting two senior Israeli officials.
According to the officials, Herzog believes that the main role of Israel’s president is to foster unity so “he does not plan to say yes or no to Netanyahu’s request for a pardon.”
It is unlikely that Netanyahu will agree to mediation since a plea deal requires an admission of wrongdoing, something that the prime minister has repeatedly said he will not agree to. The cases against Netanyahu have fallen apart one by one in the courtroom, with multiple claims disproven or withdrawn. In addition, multiple incidents of police investigators acting illegally in the cases have been revealed in the courtroom.
The report follows months of pressure from US President Donald Trump on Herzog to grant Netanyahu a pardon.
In response to the report and inquiries from media outlets, Herzog’s office issued a statement saying: “As he has stated several times in the past, President Isaac Herzog sees reaching an agreement between the parties in the cases of Prime Minister Netanyahu as a proper and appropriate solution. Negotiations toward an agreement are an essential part of the effort to bring the parties to a consensus.”
“Therefore, the president believes that it is right first, before discussing the pardon request itself, to exhaust a process that could lead to formulating an agreement between the parties, outside the walls of the courtroom.”
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
