From the Liveblog of
Monday, June 29, 2026
Judges in Netanyahu trial again suggest to prosecution to drop bribery charge
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The panel of judges in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial suggest that the prosecution drop the charge of bribery, after the premier’s lawyer says that if the charge remains, the trial that began in 2020 will stretch into 2028.
The judges made the same recommendation exactly three years ago, warning that the bribery charge would be difficult to prove. In the years since, the court has heard extensive testimony from Netanyahu on the allegations, but the recommendation has not changed. The premier is also charged with fraud and breach of trust in three cases.
The exchange over the bribery charge came on the same day that the judges proposed holding five hearings a week in the trial, to which both the prosecution and defense objected. The proposal led Netanyahu’s lawyer Amit Hadad to compare the hearings to the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
Hadad also warned that if the bribery charge stays on the docket, the trial will stretch further.
“If the bribery charge continues to accompany us, we’ll have hundreds of witnesses here. We won’t finish until March 2028,” he says, according to Hebrew media reports.
Netanyahu faces a bribery charge only in one of the three cases against him, Case 4000, in which he is also accused of fraud and breach of trust in connection with the relations between the Bezeq telecom firm and the Communications Ministry under Netanyahu.
Known as the Bezeq-Walla case, Case 4000 focuses on allegations that Netanyahu authorized regulatory decisions that financially benefited Bezeq telecommunications giant shareholder Shaul Elovitch to the tune of hundreds of millions of shekels. In return, Netanyahu allegedly received favorable media coverage from the Walla news site owned by Elovitch.
Netanyahu is also on trial for two additional counts of fraud and breach of trust — in Case 1000, which concerns gifts he allegedly inappropriately received from billionaire benefactors, and in Case 2000, in which he allegedly negotiated to obtain positive media coverage in a newspaper in exchange for curtailing its competitors.
Netanyahu, who was at today’s hearing, denies all wrongdoing.
The Times of Israel Community.