Netanyahu said mostly working from fortified basement at PMO since drone attack on his home
PM moves from his office to better-protected room; reportedly told to avoid regular visits to any specific known place, which could explain why cabinet meetings held in different locations
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is mostly working from a reinforced room on the basement level of the Prime Minister’s Office, rather than from his usual office on a higher floor, in accordance with instructions from security officials, a report said Sunday.
According to Channel 12 news, Netanyahu has told colleagues that he was instructed to use the better-protected basement-level room and to avoid being in known “permanent places,” due to ongoing concerns about drones and other attacks after a Hezbollah drone struck his home in Caesarea last month.
The explosive drone, launched from Lebanon on October 19 by the Hezbollah terror group, detonated at Netanyahu’s home when he was not present, and it smashed — though it did not penetrate — a bedroom window, causing minor damage.
The Sunday report noted that the new security protocols may explain why cabinet meetings have lately been held in changing locations, and why the wedding of Netanyahu’s son Avner has apparently been postponed to a later date, not in the near future.
Hours after the report came out, Netanyahu’s lawyers filed a request to postpone the scheduled start of his testimony next month at Jerusalem District Court, where he is on trial for three corruption cases.
The request reportedly cited several major developments in the war in recent months, adding that they “caused most of the time slots meant to prepare the prime minister to give his testimony to be canceled due to urgent security or diplomatic needs.”
Such a request had been widely expected, including on the grounds that the court does not have a safe room or bomb shelter.
Netanyahu is currently scheduled to start testifying on December 2 as the defense portion of the trial kicks off after the prosecution rested earlier this year. This testimony is expected to last several hours a day and take weeks to complete. The premier’s legal team asked late Sunday for the testimony to be postponed for two and a half months.
In July this year, Netanyahu’s legal team requested that the court postpone his testimony from November until March 2025 due to his need to manage the war, but the court rejected the request and set the date for December.
The prime minister has been charged with fraud and breach of trust in two cases and bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a third. He was indicted almost five years ago, in January 2020, and the trial began in May of that year. He denies all the allegations against him.
Last month’s attack on Netanyahu’s private residence came amid an ongoing Israeli offensive against Hezbollah, which has attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the Israel-Lebanon border on a near-daily basis since October 8, 2023, following its ally Hamas’s onslaught in southern Israel the previous day that started the ongoing war.