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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on trial facing corruption charges, announced today he had submitted a pardon request, saying the long-running cases were tearing the country apart.

United States President Donald Trump wrote to Israeli President Isaac Herzog last month, asking him to pardon Netanyahu, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the proceedings.

“The trial in my case has been ongoing for nearly six years, and is expected to continue for many more years,” Netanyahu said in a video statement, without admitting guilt.

He explained he wanted to see the process through until acquittal, “but the security and political reality - the national interest - dictate otherwise. The state of Israel is facing enormous challenges.

“The continuation of the trial is tearing us apart from within, arousing fierce divisions, intensifying rifts,” he added.

The cases against Netanyahu have exposed divisions in Israeli society between his supporters and opponents.

Netanyahu’s backers have dismissed the trials as politically motivated.

The Prime Minister and his wife Sara are accused in one case of accepting more than US$260,000 worth of luxury goods such as cigars, jewellery and champagne from billionaires in exchange for political favours.

He is also accused of attempting to negotiate more favourable coverage from two Israeli media outlets in two other cases.

‘Extraordinary request’

Netanyahu said the demand for him to testify three times a week had “tipped the scales”, calling it an “impossible requirement”.

“An immediate end to the trial will greatly help to lower the flames and promote the broad reconciliation that our country so desperately needs.”

Netanyahu’s statement was accompanied by a 111-page letter his lawyers submitted to Herzog which likewise did not admit culpability.

Herzog’s office confirmed it had received Netanyahu’s request.

“This is an extraordinary request which carries with it significant implications. After receiving all of the relevant opinions, the president will responsibly and sincerely consider the request,” the head of state’s office said in a statement.

In September, Herzog indicated that he could grant Netanyahu a pardon, saying in an interview that the Prime Minister’s case “weighs heavily on Israeli society”.

Netanyahu, 76, is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having spent more than 18 years in the post across three spells since 1996.

During his current term, which started in late 2022, Netanyahu proposed far-reaching judicial reforms that critics say sought to weaken the courts.

Those prompted massive protests that were only curtailed after the onset of the Gaza war in October 2023.

Likud leader Netanyahu has said he will stand in the next elections, due to be held before the end of 2026.

‘Only the guilty seek pardon’

The timing of Netanyahu’s request - submitted a few weeks after Trump’s letter to Herzog - was “an orchestrated move”, according to Israeli legal expert Eli Salzberger.

Herzog’s decision could take weeks, and if he grants the pardon, it is likely to be challenged in the Supreme Court, dragging out the process even further, said Salzberger, a law professor at the University of Haifa.

“Netanyahu, of course, wants to come to the next elections ... without this heavy item of a trial.”

According to Israeli law, however, a pardon can only be granted to a convicted criminal, and the legal precedents to grant it before the end of the trial are “very slim”.

Salzberger predicted that “if the pardon request is denied, it will be an easier path for [Netanyahu] to settle on a plea bargain” - an option the Prime Minister has so far rejected.

It is highly unlikely, however, that he would accept stepping down as part of a bargain.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid insisted today that a pardon must be conditioned on Netanyahu’s “admission of guilt, an expression of remorse and an immediate withdrawal from political life”.

Yair Golan, head of the left-wing opposition party the Democrats, said: “Only the guilty seek pardon”.

However, top government ministers backed Netanyahu’s request.

Defence Minister Israel Katz said a pardon would end the “deep rift that has accompanied Israeli society for nearly a decade”.

Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said ending the trial saga “reflects the good of the state”.

And far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote on X that the PM had “been persecuted for years by a corrupt judicial system that fabricated political cases against him”.

Netanyahu is the first sitting Israeli prime minister to face a corruption trial.

Ex-premier Ehud Olmert was questioned by police in a corruption case but resigned in 2009 before being tried and sentenced to 27 months in prison for fraud.

-Agence France-Presse