Bibi Battles Back

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JERUSALEM: "We are not going anywhere," Benjamin Netanyahu told cheering supporters crowded into Likud Party's headquarters in Tel Aviv. "We are staying in the place where the people and history put us, and we will continue to lead this people." But whether the Prime Minister will stay depends in large part on Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein and State Attorney Edna Arbel. "If Netanyahu is indicted for corruption on Monday," predicts TIME's Scott Macleod, "then it will be impossible for him to survive it politically or legally, given Israel's strong tradition of the rule of law. Initial indications are that the recommendation to indict Bibi is 'soft,'" MacLeod says, "based as it is on the account of only one witness. One assumes that the attorney general will not take such a momentous decision to indict a prime minister without having a pretty open-and-shut case, which appears to be lacking thus far." Meanwhile, with the peace process dead and his support rapidly evaporating, Netanyahu must decide whether to call new elections and take his chances.