Politics of Clemency

Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid for clemency tests Israel’s rule of law and entangles Gaza, Syria and Washington in a perilous political bargain.

Presidential pardons have long been a lubricant of American politics, applied with weary regularity at the end of administrations. In Israel, by contrast, clemency is rare, freighted with moral meaning and constitutional consequence. That is what makes Benjamin Netanyahu’s formal request for a pardon from President Isaac Herzog so seismic. It is not merely a legal manoeuvre but a bid to rewrite the story of a decade of polarising rule under the shadow of war.

For more than five years, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister has been defending himself in court against charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Even after the Hamas attacks and the devastating war that followed, Netanyahu continued to appear in court, sometimes three times a week. His letter to President Herzog marks a sharp turn. Though insisting on his personal innocence, he now argues that the country itself must “move on.”

For his supporters, the appeal is an act of national closure after years of institutional trench warfare between the executive and the judiciary. For his critics, it is a dark attempt by a wounded strongman to place himself above the law. The fact that he is seeking mercy rather than vindication sharpens the unease.

What lifts the drama from domestic scandal to geopolitical intrigue is Washington’s sudden proximity to the process. During a recent phone call with America’s president, Donald Trump, Netanyahu reportedly sought continued help in nudging Herzog towards clemency. Trump, who publicly called for a pardon during a Knesset address and followed it up with a letter to Israel’s president, now sounds more equivocal.

That ambiguity reflects a broader recalibration. The same call focused heavily on Gaza and Syria - arenas where Trump appears eager to dampen Israeli escalation. In Gaza, America’s president has pressed Netanyahu to soften his approach, even as Israel insists on Hamas’s disarmament as the price of any broader settlement. A recent Israeli proposal would have allowed Hamas operatives to emerge from tunnels on condition of surrender and imprisonment. They refused. The survivors are now thought to be starving underground, their operational freedom shrinking alongside their calories.

On Syria, the message from Washington was to take it easy. With a new Islamist-led leadership in Damascus seeking tenuous international legitimacy after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Trump has warned Israel against destabilising the transition. He has even floated the idea of a security pact between former enemies. Netanyahu, who until recently spoke in the language of deterrence and preventive strikes, has suddenly discovered the vocabulary of restraint. An agreement, he hinted, might be possible.

The coincidence of these shifts invites an uncomfortable question: is Netanyahu’s legal fate becoming entangled with Israel’s strategic posture? The suspicion, voiced quietly in Jerusalem’s legal and security circles, is that a pardon might become part of a larger transactional logic of de-escalation abroad in exchange for political salvation at home.

Granting the pardon would spare Israel months, perhaps years, of corrosive courtroom drama. But it would also confirm the darkest fears of the protesters who filled the streets long before the war that power ultimately shields itself. The precedent would be lethal.

Nor would the international consequences be trivial. A pardoned Netanyahu would emerge politically weakened but legally unbound. At a moment when Israel seeks to expand the circle of Arab normalisation after the Abraham Accords, the symbolism of forgiving a leader convicted, formally or informally, of corruption would sit awkwardly with the promise of institutional reform in the region.

There is also America’s role to consider. Trump’s advocacy places Washington uncomfortably close to Israel’s domestic legal machinery. The United States has long prided itself on non-interference in the internal judicial affairs of allies. A president lobbying for clemency for a leader with whom he enjoys ideological affinity blurs that boundary.

A pardon for Netanyahu might bring procedural closure. It would not bring moral peace. And if it is seen to have been brokered under the long shadow of Gaza and Syria, it may leave Israel’s institutions looking compromised.