As if the country were not already laboring under enough legal and constitutional crises, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took Israel into a new minefield on Sunday when he filed a request to President Isaac Herzog asking for a pardon for the criminal charges against him in the three cases for which he is currently standing trial.

In a brief, personal letter to Herzog, Netanyahu made the case that bringing the trial to a close would benefit the public by ending national divisions over his prosecution.

He then published a message pledging to heal the nation’s divides should his trial be halted, but in the same breath enflamed the rift by arguing that not only is he innocent but that he has been framed and the indictment against him was concocted by hostile elements in law enforcement agencies.

In the pardon application itself, his lawyers argued it was also in the public interest for the prime minister to focus on the challenges facing the country, implying, but not stating explicitly, that the trial is taking up too much of Netanyahu’s time.

Undercutting the argument was the fact that the same legal team had claimed years earlier that juggling both the trial and the affairs of state was not a problem.

Yet it is unlikely that either the possibly disingenuous appeal to unity or concerns about legal sophistry will be decisive in Herzog’s decision regarding the request, even if they play a factor.

Rather, experts say, it is Netanyahu’s glaring omission of an admission of guilt or wrongdoing that puts his request on legally shaky ground, making it highly unlikely that the president will grant him an outright pass, and inviting the possibility of court intervention if he does.

Such a move would also create deep unrest in the country, warned Prof. Yedidia Stern, head of the Jewish People Policy Institute, with the prime minister’s opponents taking to the streets in protest and his supporters arguing that their claims of a “deep state” plot against Netanyahu and the Israeli right had been proved correct.

Stern, a legal expert who has been appointed to numerous public, professional committees in the past, noted that Netanyahu’s lawyers already know it is improbable that Herzog would issue an outright pardon under the circumstances, and likely see the pardon request as the beginning of some kind of negotiation process.

He speculated that Herzog may be inclined to issue a conditional pardon requiring some form of admission of wrongdoing by Netanyahu, in which the specific language would be negotiated and a firm deadline for the end of his political career established.

Netanyahu was indicted in 2020 on charges of fraud and breach of trust in three separate corruption cases, as well as accepting a bribe in the form of positive media coverage in one of those cases.

Netanyahu has maintained throughout that he has not committed any crime, repeatedly........

© The Times of Israel