The judges hearing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial said on Monday that their June 2023 position that there were difficulties in proving the bribery charge in Case 4000 remained unchanged after Netanyahu completed his testimony.
The remark came during a hearing over the panel’s decision to expand proceedings to five days a week beginning in October, a schedule opposed by both the defense and prosecution.
Presiding Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman said the panel had not intended to revisit the matter, but that, after hearing Netanyahu’s testimony, “our position as expressed in June 2023 remains unchanged.”
The statement was not a ruling dismissing the bribery charge, nor did the Jerusalem District Court order the prosecution to withdraw it. But it returned the question of the most serious allegation in Netanyahu’s indictment to the center of the trial, just as the parties argued over whether the case can realistically be concluded before Friedman-Feldman’s expected retirement in March 2028.
The three-judge panel, which also includes Judges Moshe Bar-Am and Oded Shaham, ruled last week that the trial would return to Jerusalem after Netanyahu completed his testimony. Beginning October 4, after the High Holy Days, hearings are set to take place Sunday through Thursday.
Bribery charge needs to be removed, Hadad says
Netanyahu was not required to attend Monday’s hearing, but appeared alongside his attorney, Amit Hadad, to oppose the move.
In a two-page decision issued exactly three years earlier, on June 29, 2023, the panel said it had told the parties that there were difficulties in substantiating the bribery offense in the first count of the indictment, which concerns Case 4000.
Against that background, it suggested that the state consider withdrawing the bribery charge.
The panel said the June 20, 2023, meeting in Friedman-Feldman’s chambers had been convened solely for that purpose. It stressed that the comments were made with the caution required by the sensitivity of the issue, and that none of the parties objected to holding the discussion in chambers, nor did they request a formal record.
At the time, the prosecution said it viewed the matter differently; it said that it would refer the judges’ comments to its superiors and believed that the court had been presented with only part of the picture. It added that additional issues were expected to arise during the defense case.
The judges also recorded that the lawyers had briefly discussed the need to conclude the trial “for the benefit of the matter and the state,” while stressing that this discussion was unrelated to either the manner in which the trial should end or its eventual outcome.
Monday’s renewed statement gives that earlier exchange a different weight.
Three years ago, the prosecution could argue that the court had not yet heard the full picture and that further evidence would emerge later. Now, Netanyahu has completed his testimony, including the prosecution’s cross-examination and the defense’s limited re-examination.
The court did not say that the prosecution cannot still seek to prove the charge through the remaining defense witnesses. But whatever the prosecution had hoped to establish through Netanyahu’s cross-examination, it did not alter the panel’s previously stated concern about the bribery allegation.
Removing the bribery charge would not end Case 4000. Netanyahu would still face the allegation of fraud and breach of trust in that case, alongside the fraud and breach of trust allegations in Cases 1000 and 2000.
It would, however, remove the only bribery allegation against Netanyahu and could substantially narrow the scope of the remaining defense case, including the number and relevance of witnesses the court would be required to hear.
That could also reshape the dispute over five hearing days a week. A more limited Case 4000 could give the panel a more realistic route to conclude the evidentiary stage without requiring the parties to operate on an accelerated schedule until Friedman-Feldman’s retirement.
It is too soon to sensibly predict an end date for the trial, particularly before the defense identifies its remaining witnesses and the court decides which are necessary. But narrowing the charge could shift the question from whether the case can end before 2028 to whether the remaining evidentiary stage can be completed within a far shorter period.
There is no indication that the prosecution intends to withdraw the bribery charge.
It remains legally possible for a prosecutor to withdraw an allegation after trial proceedings have already begun. At this stage, because the defendants have answered the indictment, withdrawal of the charge would lead to an acquittal on that allegation, while the remaining charges would continue.
Such a move would be unusual in a trial that has already been litigated for more than six years. Technically, however, there is no procedural barrier to the state deciding that the narrowed indictment better serves the public interest and its ability to complete the case.
Hadad told the panel that the five-day schedule would force the defense to work around the clock and would not shorten the proceedings.
“If the court wants to shorten this trial, the solution cannot be to stifle us,” Hadad said. “This is a shortcut that is actually long.”
He warned that his team would not have adequate time to prepare witnesses, assess their relevance, or find replacements where necessary to avoid cancellations.
“The only trial we managed to find that took place five days a week was Eichmann’s trial,” Hadad said.
He said he had warned Netanyahu that the defense could not provide him with an adequate defense under such a schedule, adding that if the Case 4000 bribery count remained, the defense would need to present hundreds of witnesses.
“If the bribery charge stays, we are talking about hundreds of witnesses,” Hadad said. “We will not finish by March 2028.”
Jacques Chen, representing Shaul and Iris Elovitch, also opposed the expanded schedule.
“Five days is inhumane, unrealistic, and mismatched to any human capabilities within these time constraints,” Chen said.
He argued that the new timetable would impair the Elovitches’ right to due process, particularly in a case the panel itself had previously described as historically unusual in both scope and complexity.
Sharon Klainman, representing Arnon “Noni” Mozes in Case 2000, also argued that the consequences for Mozes could not simply be dismissed after years of proceedings.
Netanyahu then addressed the court himself, recalling the extent to which the judicial system had already needed to adjust around his security and state obligations as prime minister.
“What is happening here is a massive distortion of justice,” Netanyahu said.
The trial was “a criminal use of the justice system against me,” he added, saying that Hadad and the rest of the defense team had warned that they could not continue under the proposed schedule.
“Downright,” Netanyahu said in English, before adding in Hebrew: “I never did any of these things. This entire thing is preposterous.”
He again framed the proceedings as a political witch hunt and asked the judges to find a solution compatible with the constraints of the case.
Prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh objected after Netanyahu left the courtroom, saying that a hearing about scheduling had become another attack on law enforcement authorities.
“We reject any claim of political persecution,” Tirosh said. “We act according to the evidence before us and our professional position.”
Tirosh nevertheless agreed that five hearing days a week would be extremely difficult for both the prosecution and defense.
Four-day schedule never fully tested, Tirosh says
She said, however, that the four-day schedule set last year had never been fully tested because Netanyahu had almost never appeared for four full hearing days in a week. She urged the panel to limit unnecessarily lengthy examinations and scrutinize the relevance of the defense witnesses.
Former deputy attorney-general Raz Nizri, who served when the decision was made to indict Netanyahu, said in an interview with Kan Reshet Bet that he had opposed the bribery charge in Case 4000 from the outset.
Nizri said that, after Netanyahu’s pre-indictment hearing, he recommended withdrawing the Case 4000 bribery allegation and closing Case 2000. He said the prosecution had “wasted time and harmed the public interest,” and called on it not to again reject the judges’ position.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who previously served as justice minister and pushed for the appointment of Gali Baharav-Miara as attorney-general, also called on the prosecution to withdraw the bribery charge. He wrote that continued refusal to do so after the judges reiterated their position would be “a disgrace.”
Netanyahu was indicted in 2020 on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three cases. The bribery allegation applies only to Case 4000, which centers on claims that Netanyahu advanced regulatory benefits for Bezeq while seeking favorable coverage from the Walla news site.
The prosecution completed its cross-examination of Netanyahu earlier this month. The trial is now expected to continue with the remaining defense witnesses before the parties submit closing summaries and the three-judge panel issues a verdict.
Netanyahu said on Monday evening, “Like I said from day one: There will be nothing, because there was nothing [to begin with].”