Israel’s ‘paranoid’ Netanyahu accuses fellow politicians of conspiring against him

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the Jewish state’s president and a former minister of conspiring to have him toppled, triggering charges of “paranoia” ahead of elections.

“I know that a former Likud minister has been holding discussions with the coalition and concocted a subversive plot, with me winning a large victory at the next elections and him making sure I am not prime minister,” he told a gathering of his right-wing Likud party on Wednesday night celebrating his 69th birthday.

Under the scheme, President Reuven Rivlin would use his prerogative as head of state to name an alternative Likud candidate to head a post-election government.

Although Netanyahu did not explicitly name him, Gideon Saar, a former minister and leading rival within Likud, on Thursday publicly denied any such manoeuvre, while Rivlin mocked it as “paranoia” on the premier’s part.

Israel’s next legislative elections are scheduled for November 2019 but early polls could be held in case of a crisis within Netanyahu’s ruling Likud-led coalition.

“If Netanyahu decided against moving up the elections it’s not because President Rivlin or former Likud minister Saar is out to get him, but rather to avoid coinciding with an indictment that might lose him the elections,” Haaretz newspaper commented.

Netanyahu, who maintains his innocence in several corruption cases, is not obliged to step down as prime minister even if he is formally charged.

A Palestinian protester holds a national flag as another protester throws a stone towards Israeli forces during a demonstration on the beach near the maritime border with Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, on October 22, 2018. (Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP)

Fresh flare-up with Gaza

Netanyahu’s legal woes follow a flare-up of tensions between Israel and Gaza. Israeli warplanes hit Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip early on Thursday in response to rocket fire from the territory into southern Israel, the army said.

The fighter jets targeted a military compound in the northern Gaza Strip and a training facility and a munitions manufacturing and storage site in the south, it said in a statement.

Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas said there were no casualties in the strikes.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said the raids were in response to a rocket fired from Gaza which caused no casualties or damage but which evaded Israel’s Iron Dome defence system, triggering an inquiry.

It was the first such fire from Gaza since October 17 when a rocket severely damaged a family home in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, prompting some 20 retaliatory air strikes and the temporary suspension of fuel deliveries to Gaza.

Hamas and its allies disavowed the recent rocket fire blaming fringe groups bent on sabotaging UN and Egyptian efforts to broker a long-term truce in return for a relaxation of Israel’s crippling 11-year blockade of the impoverished territory.

But Israel has vowed repeatedly to hold Hamas to blame for any rocket fire regardless of who launched it.

“The Hamas terror organisation is responsible for all events transpiring in the Gaza Strip and emanating from it,” the army said on Thursday.

The latest flare-up comes after months of Palestinian protests along the Gaza border that have drawn a deadly response from Israeli troops.

The protesters have been demanding an end to Israel’s blockade and the right of return to land now inside Israel, from which their families were expelled or fled during the 1948 war that accompanied its creation.

More than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli fire since the protests began on March. One Israeli soldier has been killed in the border area over the same period.

The air force on Wednesday struck a position in Gaza used by protesters to launch incendiary balloons into Israel, the military said.

Palestinian fire kites and balloons have destroyed large areas of Israeli farmland causing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crop losses.

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