CRACKS are starting to a pp ear in Mr Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition, as the Israeli Prime Minister struggles to survive in office amid a snowballing corruption scandal.
The Israeli attorney general, Mr Elyakim Rubinstein, is expected to announce tomorrow or on Monday whether he is following a police recommendation and charging Mr Netanyahu with fraud and breach of trust, or whether he will merely issue a public report on the Bar On corruption affair.
If he is indicted, Mr Netanyahu would likely come under intolerable pressure to resign. But even if he is not, members of one of the coalition parties, the Third Way, said yesterday they would leave his coalition if a strongly worded public report on the case was published by Mr Rubinstein.
Sources in a second coalition party, the immigrant Yisrael Be'Aliya led by Mr Nat an Sharansky, indicated that it might follow suit. Were both these parties to bolt, Mr Netanyahu would lose his Knesset majority.
A majority of Israelis believe Mr Netanyahu must resign if charged or convicted, according to newspaper opinion polls.
A Gallup poll of 487 Jews for the daily Ma'ariv showed 52.6 per cent believed he must quit and call elections if indicted. A Dahaf Institute poll of 503 adults in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth showed 52 per cent wanted him to resign if convicted.
The affair centres on January's short lived appointment by Mr Netanyahu of a Jerusalem lawyer, Mr Ronnie Bar On, as the nation's attorney general.
Patchy details now emerging of the three month police investigation into the affair look bad for the Prime Minister.
Israeli newspapers reported yesterday that, when he was questioned by the police in mid February, Mr Netanyahu said "he could not remember" who had first suggested the patently under qualified Mr Bar On for the post. Neither could he explain why he had insisted on the appointment despite explicit warnings from his own key legal advisers that it smacked of corruption.
Indeed, although one of these advisers, Mr David Shimron, testified to the police that he had delivered such a warning to the Prime Minister, Mr Netanyahu told the investigators that he did not recollect such a conversation.
The grave significance of the Bar On affair is that, allegedly, the appointment represented an attempt to corrupt the independent Israeli legal establishment, to place a man at its head who would co operate" with the political needs of Mr Netanyahu's government arranging a plea bargain for a key Netanyahu political ally, the Shas party leader, Mr Aryeh Deri, and presumably being available to perform other similar services if required in the future.
Mr Netanyahu is said to have been ready earlier this week to sacrifice the other three figures initially fingered by police for possible indictment - Mr Deri, the Justice Minister, Mr Tsachi Hanegbi, and his own top aide, Mr Avigdor Lieberman.
But the Prime Minister is said to have scrapped that plan when he learned on Wednesday night that the police were recommending charging him as well. He has reportedly spent many hours since closeted with his aides preparing an assault on the media, the police and the judiciary, scheduled to coincide with Mr Rubinstein's announcement.
Newspapers are also reporting that some of those questioned by police hired private detectives to try and dig dirt on the police investigators, and that their efforts to intimidate the police team extended all the way up to the chief of police.