Israel's Netanyahu faces calls to resign amid legal and political crisis, but remains defiant

November 22, 2019 - Jerusalem, Israel / Palestinian Territories, Middle East - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today awoke to blanket newspaper coverage of the legal and political crisis engulfing him, and calls from opposition politicians to resign, the day after he became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to be criminally indicted.

Netanyahu, 70, said on Thursday he would not resign despite being charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a corruption scandal that he denounced as an “attempted coup”. But as Israel headed into its weekend absorbing the news that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit had presented Netanyahu with the gravest crisis of his thirty-year political career, it remained unclear whether he could continue to lead a country mired deep in political crisis after two recent elections both failed to produce a viable coalition government.