The high profile investigation of numerous Yisrael Beitenu functionaries is a “planned and well timed” operation orchestrated to take place right in the middle of the election campaign, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman charged on Sunday.
Liberman, the head of Yisrael Beitenu, made his comment to reporters before the weekly cabinet meeting. He said the timing of the arrests and questioning of leading party functionaries precisely now raised many questions. He said that there would not coincidentally be additional arrests, accompanied by more leaks, until the very end of the campaign.
Citing a recent requests from the Jerusalem prosecutor\’s office to the Jerusalem Labor Court to put off until after the elections a lawsuit involving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\’s former housekeeper Manny Naftali, Liberman wondered why the same principle – the need to be very sensitive in dealing with legal proceedings during an election campaign – did not apply to his party as well.
“On the contrary, when it comes to Yisrael Beitenu there is a pressure to speed up and widen the investigation [during the campaign],” he said,. “I know and respect State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, and I hope to hear a satisfactory explanation.”
