The judges in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial said Wednesday evening that they will accelerate the proceedings after the holidays in the next court year, with five hearings a week, from Sunday through Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. With Netanyahu’s testimony ending Wednesday, the case will move back from the Tel Aviv District Court to the Jerusalem District Court.
The panel, Judges Rivka Friedman-Feldman, Moshe Bar-Am and Oded Shaham, also suggested that both sides’ lawyers consider holding hearings during the court recess. Their goal is to finish the evidence stage in about a year and complete the verdict before Friedman-Feldman, who heads the panel, retires in March 2028. Under Israeli law, a retired judge has three months to wrap up remaining judgments, so the verdict in the Netanyahu case would have to be issued by July 2028.
If the trial is still unfinished by then, one option would be to appoint Friedman-Feldman as a senior judge, a move that does not require the Judicial Selection Committee but does need approval from the president of the Supreme Court and the justice minister. The Supreme Court recently ruled that Justice Minister Yariv Levin must cooperate with Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit on such appointments. Another, narrower option would be to add a new judge, though that is considered problematic because the judge would join after the evidence phase and would not have heard the witnesses.
Now that Netanyahu’s testimony is over, the defense case will begin and the defendants will present defense witnesses. After that will come closing arguments, followed by the judges’ long period for writing the verdict. The trial had already expanded from four hearing days a week to five, but war, the security situation and Netanyahu’s repeated requests to shorten or cancel hearings had slowed it down. The judges asked defense attorney Amit Hadad to submit the list of defense witnesses this week, and the defense is expected to seek testimony from former officials including former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit and former state attorney Shai Nitzan.
Netanyahu’s testimony ended after a year and a half and 98 hearings, many of them shortened or canceled. At the end, he said, “I am finishing, after 10 years of hell, there is no other word,” and accused the proceedings of being “vile, false, malicious” and aimed at damaging not only his rights but the public’s right to choose him as leader. He said his final hearing days were limited to clarification questions in the framework of a “re-examination,” and he also complained about the prosecution’s handling of his responses in Case 1000 and Case 2000.
