Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial testimony will not extend more than 14 additional hearings, including Monday, the cases' judges ruled just 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 twelfth hearing since Netanyahu first took the stand in December.
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 that a stretched-out schedule would result in the testimony ending in May.
The judge's 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 wished Katz to brief the judges on the state security situation and its impact on testimony scheduling in 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 last Wednesday closed-door session, and state secrets prevented all the details of their request publicly. The filing couldn't detail the reason for the request because of the security sensitivity.
"I think this is serious enough that it requires the hearing," said Netanyahu.
The prime minister argued that the current paradigm between the hearings and responsibilities to state duties were out of balance. There were thirty hours a a week, during a "historic" period, in which the prime minister was not operational.
Discussions of messages from [alleged media bribery scheme middleman Zeev] Rubinstein from a decade ago while facing a historical conflict was not balanced, said an animated Netanyahu. The right balance needed to be found in relation to the current security situation.
Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman challenged why Defense Minister Israel Katz was 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 ready to bring any other security official, but the minister was indeed a professional who would be able to elucidate on the current situation.
Hadad had also said that they had been unable to relate certain information and didn't know which information could be shared with which people in the defense and prosecution. The judges said that this should have been decided beforehand by consulting with the 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, Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman entered the courtroom alone to adjourn the hearing, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had still not returned from his business, and there were only ten minutes before the closed session.
The head of military intelligence was reportedly dispatched to brief the court 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 a review of one of the indictment items detailing a series of positive articles from a specific day, defense attorney Amit Hadad explained to Judge Moshe Bar-Am that his team needed to investigate and cross-reference to identify the articles being discussed, as the indictment did not specify the exact articles.
Bar-Am was critical of the prosecution as 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 than normal, though the prosecution had contended 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 thirteenth Netanyahu testimony hearing is set to be held on Wednesday.