The following article was written a day before the news report that in addition to his closest aide, and his dearest political crony, Benjamin Netanyahu was also named by the police as a suspect in the Baron Affair.

Humpty Dumpty

They left it in the hands of the attorney general, who alone has the authority to issue criminal indictments, whether indictments should be pressed against Prim,e Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Rubinstein has promised that whatever he decides, he will issue a public report on what he called "this very serious matter" and the report "will not be laconic." At the very least, the High Court of Justice may yet decide to force Rubinstein to indict Netanyahu.

What's it all about? Netanyahu's blind ambition to be prime minister for as long as possible.

The countdown to Bibi Netanyahu's fall began the night he was elected by that slimmest of margins -- less than a percent of the electorate -- and began his attack on Israeli democracy, in his attempt to guarantee a second term.

It began with his interpretation of the vote along racial/religious lines, having won his election with a foreign-financed campaign based on the idea that netanyahu is good for the Jews, as if the Arab citizens of Israel do not count in Israeli democracy.

It continued with the appointment of Justice Minister Ya'acov Ne'eman, who began his own tenure with frontal attacks on the legal establishment as being "anti-religious." Ne'eman was forced to resign within weeks of his appointment, when the police brought evidence to the attorney general showing that Ne'eman was suspected of suborning a witness in the five-year bribery case of Arie Deri, the sephardi-haredi wunderkind turned political machinist, who heads the Shas party.

Netanyahu was not deterred by Ne'eman's forced resignation, nor was Netanyahu to be deterred in his effort, which he openly declared was to replace the legal elite -- all the way to the supreme court, judging by his refusal to reprimand Shas attacks on the justices -- with what his closest confidante, Avigdor "Yvette" Liberman called "our kind of people." Liberman is a former bar bouncer with literary aspirations, a house in the settlements, and a management style that many pre-Netanyahu Likudniks compared to the KGB.

Perhaps Netanyahu's effort was legitimate in the context of pure coalition politics and an ideological belief that the .05 percent election margin he won on May 31 1996 gave him a mandate for sweeping changes in the Israeli legal system. After all, he had been the prime mover behind the change in the election law that made him the first directly elected prime minister in the history of the country. But by naming Tzahi Hanegbi as Justice Minister, he in effect declared open war on the legal system.

Hanegbi, son of the rightwing la passionara Geula Cohen , who opposed every move toward peace with the Arabs since Anwar Sadat landed in Israel in 1977, had been arrested several times in his career.

At the Hebrew University, he was arrested for using motorcycle chains in a physical assault on Arab and leftist students. As head of the Hebrew University student union, he was suspected of corruption in his management of the union's charter air service, and when called to testify in a case resulting from those suspicions, a Tel Aviv District Court judge said of him, "he doesn't hold truth as a candle to his feet."

Only six months before being named Justice Minister of the State of Israel, he snuck into a Yitzhak Rabin rally, and just as the then-prime minister was about to speak, Hanegbi unplugged the microphones. Funny? Yes, for a twenty-year old. The man is in his forties, and planned to one day run for prime minister. Hanegbi was the first Likud to join Bibi's campaign for the premiership back in 1992, when Yitzhak Sh amir lost to Rabin.

So, by naming Hanegbi as justice minister to replace Ne'eman, Netanyahu served notice of his intention to make the legal system a wax dummy, pliable in his hands. It's said that Netanyahu is smart. He wasn't too smart when it came to Hanegbi, who made his bones as a Herut/Likud strong-armer in the tough Jerusalem branch of the party, then run by another Netanyahu stiff, Yehoshua Matza, whose claim to fame in politics (until Netanyahu named the high-school graduate as Health Minister) was that as deputy mayor briefly under Teddy Kollek he took the opportunity of filling in for Kollek while Teddy was overseas, and ordered a UN compound in Jerusalem, bulldozed. The move was popular in the Likud stronghold in the open market of Jerusalem, Mahane Yehuda. It didn't go over too well in the Security Council of the UN.

In any case, Hanegbi, not too bright, not too wise, and definitely not a pillar of rectitude, was easy prey for Arie Deri, whose own peculiar contribution to this period of Jewish history is to personify much of what the Biblical prophets condemned in the political establishment of their time. And since Netanyahu needs Deri in his coalition, Netanyahu, too was easy prey for Deri.

Deri wanted an attorney general who would agree to a plea bargain, if not a complete dropping of the charges against him. While the High Court of Justice probably wouldn't allow such a blatant disruption of the legal process, an attorney general who would favor a mooted national amnesty for prisoners in the 50th anniversary celebrations of Israel's independence next year, could clear things up for Deri, and some of his friends in the Likud, (and coincidentally, key Netanyahu supporters) like Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert (on trial for corruption in the 1988 election campaign), David Appel, recently acquitted in a criminal case regarding his handling of a slum-removal project in the early '80s, but now facing civil suits in the matter, and possibly others.

Deri decided that the perfect candidate for the attorney general's job would be Roni Baron, a criminal lawyer in Jerusalem, best known as active in the management of the Likud-owned football team Betar Jerusalem, a member of the Likud central committee -- and, owner of the law officer where hanegbi clerked his first year out of law school. Outside of Likud circles, Baron was virtually unknown, with a legal career distinguished only by its utter lack of distinction.

Baron was a perfect match for Netanyahu, whose own record of appointments has ranged from thugs (like Hanegbi) to quacks, like his science advisor, a man named Hanakuglu with a theory of racial genetics that he says proves the Palestinians are really Syrians.

In short, the stage was set for a coup against the legal system. Couched in ideological terms -- since the squeak election, the "nationalist camp" has been claiming that since the Jewish vote gave Netanyahu a 10 percent margin over the "peace camp," the election gave him a sweeping mandate for change -- the coup was in fact an attempt by a coterie of suspected felons to take over the legal establishment.

When for a moment, it appeared that netanyahu wasn't going along with the plan, Deri leaked to Israel radio that Shas was reconsidering its vote on the Hebron issue.

The fact that Netanyahu went along with the plan is not in doubt. For the nearly sixty hours between the time he and Hanegbi decided to bring Baron's name to the cabinet, and the time Baron was forced to resign by withering public criticism -- and a threatened High Court injunction -- Netanyahu defended the appointment as being in the national interest.

If he knew that there was a conspiracy, he has no place in office. if he didn't know there was a conspiracy, he has no place in office.

There are some important factors to keep in mind: