Itamar Rabinovich’s appointment as Israel’s next ambassador to the United States appears to have cleared its final hurdle with the High Court of Justice’s rejection of a petition to block the posting.
Knesset member Gonen Segev of the right-wing opposition Tsomet party had petitioned the court to stop the Tel Aviv University professor from taking up his post.
Segev’s complaint was connected to charges that Rabinovich mishandled tax payments on income earned when he was working in America.
A three-justice panel dismissed the petition, holding that Rabinovich’s brush with the income tax authorities, which ended with a monetary settlement, did not give the court the right to intervene in the Cabinet’s move to name him ambassador.
The way is now clear for Rabinovich, who also heads Israel’s delegation to the peace talks with Syria, to take up his job in Washington early in February, as scheduled.
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