TEL AVIV: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was back in a Tel Aviv court on Wednesday for the latest hearing in his long-running corruption trial, which opened in May 2020.
The prime minister kept a smiling face as he and his entourage of several ministers from his conservative Likud party were heckled by protesters en route to the tribunal.
It comes after US President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that the Israeli premier should be pardoned in his three separate corruption cases.
His latest appearance at the Tel Aviv court also follows the return of the hostages taken by Hamas as part of Trump’s US-brokered plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
In one case, Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are accused of accepting more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods, including champagne, cigars and jewelry, from billionaires in exchange for political favors.
In two other instances, Netanyahu is also charged with attempting to negotiate better press coverage from two Israeli media outlets. He has denied any wrongdoing, claiming to be the victim of a political plot.
During his current term, which started in late 2022, Netanyahu has proposed far-reaching judicial reforms that critics say sought to weaken the courts.
Those prompted massive protests that only abated after the onset of the Gaza war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In an address on Monday to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, Trump told the chamber that Netanyahu should receive a pardon in the graft cases.
“Cigars and champagne, who the hell cares about that?” Trump joked, before asking his Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog: “Why don’t you give him a pardon?“
The Israeli premier is also subject to an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on suspicion of ordering war crimes in his government’s assault on Hamas militants in Gaza.
Netanyahu holds the record for the most years spent at the head of Israel’s government, having served 18 years in several stints as premier since 1996.
Netanyahu back in court for hearing in corruption trial
https://arab.news/w9sxa
Netanyahu back in court for hearing in corruption trial
- PM, wife accepted $260,000 worth of gifts from billionaires in exchange for political favors
- He also faces charges of war crimes at the ICC over Israel’s attacks against Gaza civilians
Syria’s Kurds hail ‘positive impact’ of Turkiye peace talks
- “The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad
- “We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria”
ISTANBUL: Efforts to broker peace between Turkiye and the Kurdish militant group PKK have had a “positive impact” on Syria’s Kurds who also want dialogue with Ankara, one of its top officials said Saturday.
Earlier this year, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ended its four-decade armed struggle against Turkiye at the urging of its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, shifting its focus to a democratic political struggle for the rights of Turkiye’s Kurdish minority.
The ongoing process has raised hopes among Kurds across the region, notably in Syria where the Kurds control swathes of territory in the north and northeast.
“The peace initiative in Turkiye has had a direct impact on northern and eastern Syria,” said Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast.
“We want a dialogue process with Turkiye, a dialogue that we understand as Kurds in Syria... We want the borders between us to be opened,” she said, speaking by video link to an Istanbul peace conference organized by Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party.
Speaking in Kurdish, she hailed Turkiye for initiating the peace moves, but said releasing Ocalan — who has led the process from his cell on Imrali prison island near Istanbul where he has been serving life in solitary since 1999 — would speed things up.
“We believe that Abdullah Ocalan being released will let him play a much greater role... that this peace and resolution process will happen faster and better.”
She also hailed Ankara for its sensitive approach to dialogue with the new regime in Damascus that emerged after the ousting of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad a year ago.
“The Turkish government has a dialogue and a relationship with the Syrian government. They also have open channels with us. We see that there is a careful approach to this matter,” she said.
Turkiye has long been hostile to the Kurdish SDF force that controls swathes of northeastern Syria, seeing it as an extension of PKK, and pushing for the US-backed force to integrate into the Syrian military and security apparatus.
Although a deal was reached to that end in March, its terms were never implemented.
“In this historic process, as the Middle East is being reorganized, Turkiye has a very important role. Peace in both countries — within Turkish society, Kurdish society and Arab society.. will impact the entire Middle East,” Ahmad said.
Syria’s Kurdish community believed coexistence was “fundamental” and did not want to see the nation divided, she said.
“We do not support the division of Syria or any other country. Such divisions pave the way for new wars. That is why we advocate for peace.”
