Netanyahu trial to move to five hearings a week after the holidays

The panel hearing Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial announced on Wednesday that, after the upcoming holidays, the court will sit five times a week in the so-called case 4000 proceedings. The move comes as Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman is expected to retire, leaving about two years to write the verdict. Until now, the court had held four hearings a week, three of them devoted to Netanyahu’s testimony, and many sessions were shortened or canceled.

Netanyahu testified on Wednesday in the Tel Aviv District Court for what was likely the last time as part of the defense’s cross-examination in the “cases 1000, 2000 and 4000” trial, in which he is charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. At the start of the hearing, Friedman-Feldman read out the case details as is customary each day. Netanyahu’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, said he expected it to be the final day of testimony and that the session would be much shorter.

Hadad told the court, “Probably for the last time. This will be a much shorter hearing. I adopted what the court said, I cut 97% of the things.” He added that the problem was a supposed pattern in which each witness is shown one version until “the prime minister says the opposite,” claiming that this makes it look as if all the witnesses are lying except Netanyahu. “The opposite happened, all the witnesses said what the prime minister said after they were shown the material. He was harmed,” Hadad said.

Friedman-Feldman replied that wherever this issue had arisen, the defense’s note had already recorded that “opposite things were said,” adding that it appears throughout the transcript and had not been ignored. Judge Moshe Bar-Am then backed her up, saying the assumption was wrong and “no impression was created.” Hadad then turned to case 4000, involving Bezeq and Walla owners Shaul and Iris Elovitch, and reminded Netanyahu of his claim that the articles cited as unusual favorable coverage were limited compared with the negative coverage.