Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial testimony will not extend to more than 14 additional hearings, including Monday’s, the cases’ judges ruled shortly before the Monday hearing began.
The prosecution and defense have until Tuesday to respond to the decision. The judges made the ruling to limit the Israeli leader’s testimonies amid deliberations about altering the weekly docket to hold two hearings rather than three a week. The defense estimates that it needs 33-35 total testimonies, with Monday only being the 12th hearing since Netanyahu first took the stand in December 2024.
On Sunday, the prosecution filed a challenge to Netanyahu’s request to alter the weekly schedule, chiefly on the grounds that the number of testimony hearings was already unprecedented in scope – and a stretched-out schedule would result in the testimony ending in May.
The judges’ Monday decision did not rule on the schedule alteration, which became the subject of much of the hearing following another Monday request filed by Netanyahu attorney Amit Hadad asking to hold a closed-door session joined by Defense Minister Israel Katz.
Hadad had wanted Katz to brief the judges on the state security situation and its impact on testimony scheduling in a continuation of a Wednesday closed session.
Security situation 'changed'
After an unsuccessful series of exchanges between Hadad and the judges about the details and ambiguousness of the defense’s morning filing, Netanyahu stood to explain that the security situation had changed since their closed-door session last Wednesday, and state secrets prevented providing all the details of their request publicly. The filing couldn’t detail the reason for the request because of the security sensitivity.
According to him, these are extremely sensitive issues that have “implications for our existence, for the future of the state.”
“This matter is serious enough to allow this hearing,” Netanyahu said, explaining that a more cautious approach to the conduct of the trial was required in view of the changing security circumstances.
The prime minister argued that the current paradigm of hearings and responsibilities to state duties was out of balance and that, for 30 hours a week, during a historic period, the prime minister was prevented from being operational. Discussing messages from alleged media bribery scheme middleman Zeev Rubinstein from a decade ago, while the country was facing a multifront conflict, was not balanced, said an animated Netanyahu.
Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman challenged why Defense Minister Israel Katz had been requested to join, questioning what the defense minister would know that the prime minister wouldn’t. The minister was not a security professional but a politician, she said.
Hadad said that he was amenable to bringing any other security official, but the minister was indeed a professional who would be able to elucidate on the current situation. Hadad explained that they had been unable to relate certain information, and didn’t know which information could be shared with whom in the defense and prosecution.
The judges said that this should have been decided beforehand by consulting with intelligence officials. The judges advised that the defense contact the relevant officials for consultation, giving them a recess of several minutes to prepare. Several breaks were held throughout the day as the prime minister’s camp coordinated security clearances and the attendance of an official. After private discussions between the defense and prosecution, the latter approved a closed hearing at the end of the testimony.
The long recesses continued throughout the hearing, with Netanyahu leaving to address an urgent matter in the last hour. Finally, Friedman-Feldman entered the courtroom alone to adjourn the hearing, with Netanyahu still not back from his business and only 10 minutes before the closed session. The head of military intelligence was reportedly dispatched to brief the court during the closed session, which resulted in Tuesday’s hearing being canceled due to state security considerations.
While Hadad had intended to focus on other matters, he continued to review the items of the indictment with Netanyahu, attacking the premise that Walla had provided unusual positive news coverage for the Israeli leader in 2015 in exchange for advancing favorable policies for its then-owner Shaul Elovitch.
In reviewing one of the indictment items that described a series of positive articles on a particular day, defense Attorney Amit Hadad explained to Judge Moshe Bar-Am that his team had to investigate and cross-reference to determine what articles were being discussed, as the indictment did not list the exact articles.
Bar-Am was critical of the prosecution after the defense argued that the indictment did not have an index or list of links to make it simple to access articles being discussed in the indictment, creating a significant research burden.
The prime minister also argued that compared to other news sites, he was getting more negative coverage from Walla, with the prosecution contending that the opposite had occurred. If the prosecution hadn’t checked the standard of how he’d been covered on other sites, Netanyahu said, they had been “coming with extreme carelessness. I hope it’s just carelessness.”
The 13th Netanyahu testimony hearing is set to be held on Wednesday.