JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls to step down Wednesday after police recommended his indictment for corruption, the biggest challenge yet to the right-wing premier’s long tenure in power.
Netanyahu again came out swinging on Wednesday, harshly criticizing the police investigation while making clear he has no intention of resigning.
His governing coalition, seen as the most right-wing in Israeli history, appears firm for now, but reactions from key members in the coming days will be watched closely for signs of fissures.
“I can reassure you that the coalition is stable,” Netanyahu said at an event in Tel Aviv.
“Neither me nor anyone else has plans for elections. We’re going to continue to work together for the good of Israeli citizens until the end of the term” in 2019.
Netanyahu, prime minister for a total of nearly 12 years, also harshly denounced the police recommendations against him as “full of holes, like Swiss cheese.”
He said the police report was “contrary to the truth and logic.”
Police recommended Tuesday that he be indicted for bribery, fraud and breach of public trust.
The attorney general must now decide how to move forward, a process that could take months.
A prime minister facing such police recommendations or who has been formally charged is not obliged to resign.
As it became clear police were to issue the recommendations on Tuesday night, Netanyahu gave a televised address to the nation, proclaiming his innocence and criticizing the police.
Ministers close to him also defended Netanyahu.
Avi Gabbay, leader of the opposition Labour party, said the “Netanyahu era is over” and called on him to step down.
“He is unworthy to continue to be prime minister of Israel. It’s very simple,” Gabbay said in a video interview with the Ynet news site.
Tzipi Livni, part of the main opposition Zionist Union alliance that also includes Labour, criticized what she called a campaign to undermine the police.
One of Netanyahu’s main rivals also came under the spotlight when it emerged he had spoken to police about one of the allegations against the prime minister.
Yair Lapid, head of the centrist opposition party Yesh Atid, said “there is no choice but to tell the truth when the police ask for explanations in a serious corruption case.”
Lapid, who also called on Netanyahu to step down, was finance minister at the time one of the allegations took place.
But at the same time, key coalition ministers signalled they would remain in the government, though at least one also criticized Netanyahu’s behavior.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett said “taking gifts” as Netanyahu is alleged to have done was not up to the “standard” of a prime minister.
But he stressed Netanyahu was innocent until proven guilty and that he would wait for the attorney general’s decision.
Bennett, who has ambitions to be prime minister, heads the far-right party Jewish Home, which holds eight seats in parliament.
Netanyahu’s coalition controls 66 out of 120 seats in total.
Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, whose center-right Kulanu party controls 10 seats, also signalled he would remain in the government as did Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party holds five seats.
“Something very, very dramatic happened last night, a kind of earthquake, but as far as changes in the political arena, I don’t see that yet,” political scientist Abraham Diskin of Hebrew University said in an interview with The Israel Project NGO.
Police have been investigating Netanyahu over suspicions that he and his family received expensive gifts from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer.
The gifts allegedly included pricey cigars, jewelry and champagne.
The total value of the gifts received between 2007 and 2016 is estimated at around one million shekels (229,000 euros, $283,000), according to police.
They have also been probing allegations Netanyahu sought a secret deal for favorable coverage with the publisher of top-selling newspaper Yediot Aharonot.
Police recommended indicting Milchan and the publisher, Arnon Moses, with bribery as well.
The 68-year-old premier has been questioned seven times by police and has called the investigation an attempt by political opponents to force him from office.
Police said Netanyahu had been suspected of trying to help Milchan receive tax benefits in Israel, of assisting him in receiving a visa in the United States and of promoting his business interests.
Milchan, who is Israeli, has produced many films, including the blockbuster “Pretty Woman.”
While an indictment alone would not legally oblige Netanyahu to resign, he would likely face mounting pressure to do so. He would be legally forced to step down if convicted and all appeals exhausted.
He has already faced a series of large protests in Tel Aviv over the corruption cases.
Netanyahu’s time as premier is fast approaching Israel’s revered founding father David Ben-Gurion’s 13 years. He first held the office from 1996-1999 before returning to power in 2009.
Netanyahu rejects calls to resign after police seek indictment
Netanyahu rejects calls to resign after police seek indictment
Lebanon arrests late Muslim Brotherhood leader’s son wanted by Egypt, says judicial official
Qaradawi, also a poet, was detained on Saturday as he arrived from Syria at the Masnaa border crossing due to an Egyptian arrest warrant, the official said.
The warrant was “based on an Egyptian judiciary ruling” sentencing Qaradawi in absentia to five years’ jail on charges of “opposing the state and inciting terrorism,” the official added.
His father was prominent Sunni scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood which is outlawed in Egypt.
The late scholar was imprisoned several times in Egypt over his links to the Muslim Brotherhood. He died in 2022 after decades in exile in Qatar.
Lebanese authorities “will ask the Egyptian authorities” to transfer Al-Qaradawi’s file for examination, the judicial official said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The judiciary will make a recommendation on whether “the conditions are met for him to be extradited” and the matter will be referred to the Lebanese government, which must make the final decision, the official added.
Qaradawi was a political organizer against the government of longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in 2011 in the Arab Spring uprising.
He later became a vocal opponent of current Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
A family friend told AFP that Qaradawi holds Turkish citizenship and was returning from a visit to Syria, where militants led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham toppled longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad on December 8.
Assad’s ousting came more than 13 years after war broke out in Syria with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Qaradawi had posted a video online taken at Damascus’s Umayyad mosque, celebrating Assad’s fall.
The video has circulated widely including on Egyptian media, where local outlets have described it as “insulting.”
Some commentators close to El-Sisi’s government have demanded Qaradawi be handed over to Egyptian authorities.
Cairo blacklisted the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist” organization in 2013, and has since jailed thousands of its members and supporters and executed dozens.
Yusuf Al-Qaradawi’s daughter Ola was detained in Egypt for four and a half years over her links to the organization. She was released in 2021.
Israeli airstrike near Syrian capital kills 11, war monitor says
- Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike targeted a weapons depot that belonged to Assad’s forces near the industrial town of Adra
BEIRUT: An Israeli airstrike in the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday killed 11 people, according to a war monitor, as Israel continues to target Syrian weapons and military infrastructure even after the ouster of former President Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike targeted a weapons depot that belonged to Assad’s forces near the industrial town of Adra, northeast of the capital. The observatory said at least 11 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV also reported the airstrike but put the death toll at six. The Israeli military did not comment on the airstrike Sunday.
Israel, which has launched hundreds of airstrikes over Syria since the country’s uprising turned-civil war broke out in 2011, rarely acknowledges them. It says its targets are Iran-backed groups that backed Assad. Israel also wants to remove a threat posed by weapons in Syria, which is now governed by militants.
Syrian insurgents who ousted Assad in a lightning ofensive in early December have demanded that Israel cease its airstrikes.
Israeli forces order new evacuation at besieged northern Gaza town, residents say
- Israeli forces instruct Beit Hanoun residents to leave, causing new displacements
- Palestinian officials say evacuations worsen Gaza’s humanitarian conditions
CAIRO: Israeli forces carrying out a weeks-long offensive in northern Gaza ordered any residents remaining in Beit Hanoun to quit the town on Sunday, pointing to Palestinian militant rocket fire from the area, residents said.
The instruction to residents to leave caused a new wave of displacement, although it was not immediately clear how many people were affected, the residents said.
Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at Hamas militants and preventing them from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm’s way, the military says.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen humanitarian conditions of the population.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fueling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.
The Israeli military announced its new push into the Beit Hanoun area on Saturday.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had lost communication with people still trapped in the town, and it was unable to send teams into the area because of the raid.
On Friday, Israeli forces stormed the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza. The military said it was being used by militants, which Hamas denies.
The raid on the hospital, one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of Gaza, put the last major health facility in the area out of service, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a post on X.
Some patients were evacuated from Kamal Adwan to the Indonesian Hospital, which is not in service, and medics were prevented from joining them there, the Health Ministry said. Other patients and staff were taken to other medical facilities.
On Sunday, health officials said an Israeli tank shell hit the upper floor of the Al-Ahly Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza City near the X-ray division.
Meanwhile, Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes across the enclave killed at least 16 people on Sunday. One of those strikes killed seven people and wounded others at Al-WAFA Hospital in Gaza City, the Palestinian civil emergency service said in a statement.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Gaza rescuers say Israeli strike on hospital kills 7
- Strike on Al-Wafaa Hospital came a day after the military ended a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza
- Military also detained the hospital’s chief, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, saying he was suspected of being a Hamas militant
GAZA STRIP: Gaza’s civil defense agency said an air strike hit a hospital Sunday, killing at least seven people, while Israel said it had targeted militants at the no longer functioning facility.
“Seven martyrs and several injured people, including critical cases, have been recovered following the Israeli strike on the upper floor of Al-Wafaa Hospital in central Gaza City,” a civil defense agency statement said.
Israel’s military said it had carried out a “precise strike” targeting members of Hamas’s aerial defense unit operating from a “command and control center in a building that served in the past as the Al-Wafaa hospital.”
“The building does not currently serve as a hospital,” the military said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the hospital was still in use.
“The Al-Wafaa Hospital is partially operational, providing care to patients with physical disabilities,” the ministry’s director general, Munir Al-Barsh, told AFP.
“The hospital had been rehabilitated and was getting ready to receive patients. Had it not been targeted by Israeli shelling today, it would have been ready to fully reopen in the next few days,” he said.
The strike on Al-Wafaa Hospital came a day after the military ended a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, an assault the World Health Organization reported left the facility empty of patients and staff.
The military also detained the hospital’s chief, Hossam Abu Safiyeh, saying he was suspected of being a Hamas militant.
Since October 6, Israel’s operations in the Palestinian territory have focused on northern Gaza, where it says its land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
However, the military has also carried out air strikes and shelling in other areas of Gaza as it presses on with its campaign against the militants.
Asma Assad barred from UK to seek cancer treatment
- UK foreign secretary says she is ‘not welcome’ in Britain
- Former Syrian first lady’s passport expired in 2020
LONDON: Asma Al-Assad is effectively barred from returning to the UK after her British passport expired, The Times newspaper reported.
The wife of former Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad will not be able to return to her birthplace, London, despite reports that she is critically ill with leukemia.
The 49-year-old has been given a 50-50 chance of surviving the illness, according to sources.
The news comes as her father, Fawaz Akhras, a renowned cardiologist, left his work at the privately run Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, west London, to care for his daughter in Moscow, where the Assad family was granted asylum this month.
Asma Assad’s British passport expired in September 2020, and it is unclear whether UK ministers have blocked renewal or if the former first lady simply allowed the document’s validity to lapse.
Yvette Cooper, the UK home secretary, said that Assad will be prevented from entering the UK to seek treatment.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that the former investment banker is “not welcome” in Britain.
Asma Assad became Syria’s first lady in 2000 after marrying the country’s new president.
Leaked emails show that she ordered luxury goods in London and Paris during the civil war in her country, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
She played a key role in supporting her husband’s brutal crackdown on opposition protests during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Asma Assad reportedly fled to Moscow weeks before her husband this month during a lighting offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
Her three children, Hafez, 23, Zein, 21, and Karim, 19, are also in Moscow, where the family own luxury properties.
Sources told The Telegraph last week that the former first lady was being kept in isolation during medical treatment.
“Asma is dying. She can’t be in the same room as anyone,” one source said.
Her father and his wife, Sahar, 75, were placed under US sanctions along with Asma’s younger brothers in 2020, although none of her family has been blacklisted by the UK.
