Netanyahu testimony likely to take another 9 to 14 months, court told
PM’s defense team requests scheduled hearings be reduced from three to two times a week. ‘I insist on my right to answer every single clause’ of indictment,’ he tells court
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his criminal trial will likely go on for at least another nine months, possibly until April 2026, lawyers on both sides of the case said during a hearing on Monday.
Netanyahu’s defense attorney Amit Hadad told the Jerusalem District Court that he would need another 24 hearings to complete his primary questioning of Netanyahu, while Yoni Tadmor of the State Attorney’s Office said prosecutors would need three times as many hearings for cross-examination.
That means Netanyahu, who has already taken the stand 10 times, would need to testify another 126 times — 24 for Hadad’s remaining primary questioning, and 102 for the prosecution’s cross-examination.
To date, Netanyahu has been scheduled to testify three times a week, although that has yet to transpire since he began his testimony on December 10, 2024. And his defense attorneys requested on Monday that the scheduled hearings be pared back to two a week, meaning that the 126 hearings to come would take another 63 weeks to complete.
The trial began in May 2020 and is now rapidly approaching its fifth year. Even after Netanyahu’s testimony ends, his defense team will have a list of other witnesses to call to the stand. If convicted, Netanyahu would be entitled to appeal to the Supreme Court.
At the end of Monday’s hearing, Netanyahu requested in a closed-door session that Tuesday’s hearing be canceled due to pressing security and diplomatic issues he said he needed to address, and further requested that the number of hearings every week be reduced from three to two because of the ongoing security tensions and complex diplomatic situation.
The court agreed to the request to cancel Tuesday’s hearing, and said it would consider the request to reduce the number of hearings per week after receiving a proposal from the defense team for options to hear testimony from other defense witnesses once a week if one of the scheduled days of Netanyahu’s testimony is to be permanently canceled.
The defense must present its proposal by February 20, after which the court will request the position of the State Attorney’s Office, before making a ruling.
During Monday’s hearing, Hadad continued to deal one by one with the 315 examples brought in the indictment against Netanyahu of alleged interference by him, his family members, or his associates with the Walla news site’s coverage of the prime minister’s affairs.
The examples form a key component of the allegations against Netanyahu that he had an illicit quid pro quo agreement with Walla owner Shaul Elovitch. Hadad has succeeded in raising heavy doubts over the accuracy and relevance of numerous examples so far, although he has covered just over 60 examples to date.
Voices were raised and tempers flared Monday when the judges requested that Hadad reduce the amount of time he spends on the examples, and that he deal with batches of examples instead of going through them one by one.
Hadad told the court that he needed between 12 to 14 more hearings to cover Case 4000, which relates to the allegations of an illegal relationship between Netanyahu and Elovitch, including a bribery charge, and a further 10 hearings for cases 1000 and 2000, in which Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust.
Netanyahu’s defense team has previously said it will reduce the amount of time spent on the examples if the prosecution removes the ones that appear unconnected to the prime minister’s actions, but the State Attorney’s Office has refused, leading Hadad to insist on continuing to go through each example in detail.
“We’ve had nine hearings, we have listened with great patience. Our feeling is that there needs to be a change,” said Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman, according to Channel 12.
“Examples can be brought together, questions can also be asked about multiple examples together. We don’t need you to show everything on the [court] screen,” she added.
Hadad refused, however, pointing to the State Attorney Office’s ongoing refusal to remove seemingly non-pertinent examples from the indictment, leading to an intemperate exchange with senior prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh.
Netanyahu attempted to intervene in the debate between the judges, Hadad, and the prosecutors, and stood up to start speaking. Friedman-Feldman shut him down, telling him, “Sir, you cannot say anything. We’re in a discussion of lawyers, not with you.”
When Netanyahu tried again, Friedman-Feldman interrupted him again, saying, “Mr. Netanyahu, you are requested to sit,” to which he responded, “I am astonished.”
The prime minister did eventually manage to voice his opinion on the issue, and insisted it was his right to address every example brought in the indictment.
“This bribery I am accused of is [constructed of] 315 bricks,” he said. “This is what they have harassed me and an entire country with for years. It is my right to self-defense, to give a true testimony, to ask me the toughest questions. The prosecution refuses to remove clauses from the indictment, and therefore, I insist on my right to answer every single clause and smash every single brick.”
Hadad went on to deal with more examples, including number 75, in which the indictment says that Netanyahu’s spokesperson Nir Hefetz requested of Walla CEO Ilan Yeshua that the news site include Netanyahu’s response to allegations made by the State Comptroller regarding the expenses claimed by the prime minister and his wife while staying in the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem.
The indictment says that Netanyahu was personally involved in the request and that Elovitch was involved in ensuring it was answered.
But Hadad asked Netanyahu if it would be considered “exceptional” for a news outlet to include a response by the subject of a critical article in an item about them.
The indictment alleges that Walla gave Netanyahu “exceptional treatment” due to the alleged illegal bribery relationship between him and Elovitch.
“This is bribery?! This is bribery?!” the prime minister exclaimed.
