The hearing marked the resumption of the trial which opened in May 2020. It had been interrupted by the war in the Gaza Strip, Mr. Netanyahu having filed several requests for postponement citing the hostilities triggered by the attack on Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7, 2023, and still ongoing.
At the hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu took the stand and responded to accusations and testimony against him, including from former close associates. Outside the court, supporters of the prime minister chanted “Netanyahu, the people support you”while opponents, who have been organizing demonstrations against him for months, chanted “Bibi a prison”the nickname of the Prime Minister, noted an AFP journalist.
Asked how he felt about the accusations, he replied: “To say this is a drop in the ocean would be an exaggeration, but I am busy with important global issues.” MPs from his right-wing government coalition attended the hearing, which was held in an underground courtroom. For security reasons, the trial was relocated from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
260.000 dollars
In the first case, Mr. Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, are accused of having accepted more than $260,000 worth of luxury goods (cigars, jewelry, champagne) from billionaires, including the Hollywood producer of Israeli origin Arnon Milchan and Australian businessman James Packer, in exchange for political favors.
In the second, the Prime Minister is prosecuted for trying to negotiate more favorable coverage from Arnon Mozes, publisher of the daily Yedioth Aharonoththe first paid national daily, in exchange for the promise of a law that would have hampered the circulation of the free newspaper Israel Come ona popular title in Israel.
In the latest case, Mr. Netanyahu is accused of trying to facilitate a merger desired by a close friend, Shaul Elovitch, then a majority shareholder of Bezeq, the country's largest telecommunications group, in exchange for favorable coverage of its politics on the popular news website Walla, also owned by Mr. Elovitch.
Mr. Netanyahu's detractors see the trial as an opportunity for justice to finally be done against a politician willing to do anything to stay in power. They also claim that the Prime Minister used the war that has been going on for 14 months as a pretext to escape a trial which is likely to find him guilty.
“Milestones”
The resumption of the trial constitutes “an important step”told AFP Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) think tank, for whom “The fact that a very powerful prime minister is being indicted and his criminal case is being examined by the court (testifies) to the strength of Israel's democratic institutions.”
A sign of some concern in Mr. Netanyahu's camp, a dozen ministers sent a letter on Monday to Gali Baharav-Miara, state attorney general, to request a postponement of the hearing, notably due to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in neighboring Syria.
The letter follows similar calls from ministers and requests from the prime minister's legal team to postpone his hearing due to the war and his busy schedule. The prosecution, however, argued that it was in the public interest for the trial to conclude as quickly as possible, and the court denied these requests, although occasionally allowing hearings to be shortened.
