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Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to carry on as Israel’s Prime Minister yesterday and criticised the police investigation of him, claiming it was “full of holes, like Swiss cheese”.

He attacked Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist opposition party Yesh Atid. Lapid gave testimony about Netanyahu’s alleged efforts to help US businessman Arnon Milchan that he witnessed when serving as Finance Minister during Netanyahu’s first term.

He said: “Lapid said that he was questioned by the police for an hour. I was only asked a few questions about this … in an investigation of a year and a half. And now it turns out, on this basis, that Lapid is a key witness.” Netanyahu said Lapid looked to “topple me at any price”. His Likud allies also lashed out at Lapid, with Coalition Chairman David Amsalem angrily calling him a “snitch”.

Lapid responded by calling on the Prime Minister to resign “for the good of Israel’s citizens”.

He added: “You can’t be the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Health Minister when you spend most of your time with lawyers and commenting to the media; you can’t represent us in the world when every foreign leader you meet knows that you’ve been charged with severe offences. I call on the Attorney General to expedite, as far as possible, the decision whether or not to indict.”

At a closed party meeting, Lapid told Yesh Atid MKs: “They’ve lost all semblance of statesmanship. They don’t even deny that Netanyahu received gifts worth a million shekels. It’s interesting to think what he would say if he had learned that [Moshe] Kahlon or [Naftali] Bennett had received gifts worth a million shekels from some tycoon.”

Israel’s Channel 2 news reported last night that the Attorney General’s Office and the police do not agree about some of the evidence to support the police recommendation to indict Netanyahu. A source in the Attorney General’s Office reportedly said the police have put the Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, in an impossible position. The police responded that the evidence for indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust was ironclad. Some estimates suggest it could take at least six months for the Attorney General to make a decision.