The Israeli prime minister, will not testify again until next September, after the hearings scheduled for this week were canceled by claiming health problems and taking into account that the courts enter into summer break.
Netanyahu’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, requested on Sunday to postpone the hearings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday this week, after the Israeli president’s office reported that this last night he had suffered intoxication after ingesting food in poor condition.
“According to the instructions of his doctors, the prime minister will rest at his home during the next three days and will take care of state affairs from there,” said the statement of the Netanyahu office.
The State Prosecutor’s Office agreed, but asked the courts to transfer the hearings to Wednesday and Thursday. The Jerusalem District Court finally decided that these would finally be resumed after summer. One more respite.
Last Wednesday, July 16, the Israeli president also asked to interrupt the audience that was taking place welcoming those for the clashes that exploded between Bedouins and Druss in Al Sueida.
Netanyahu is the first head of government in the history of Israel who is prosecuted being active and is accused of crime of bribery, fraud and abuse of trust. The central theme of the three cases is how Netanyahu fostered relationships, for personal and political benefit, with magnates that had influence on important media.
The trial resumed in December 2023, after a long pause of two months and after the state of exception was declared, after Hamas’s attacks against Israeli soil of October 7 of that year, after which the offensive against Gaza that still lasts began. The process began in January 2020, so it has been tangled for five years and has already made more than 300 people go through the poda.
In 2021, the prime minister appeared for the first time before the Court after a postponement motivated by the Coronavirus pandemic and on that occasion he declared himself innocent, but it was not until 2024, when for the first time he faced the defense and prosecution questions. A process that has been delayed by the war in Gaza, its trips to the United States or attacks on Iran, strategically scheduled.
In his last intervention, he said: “Do I escape? I have been waiting for this day for eight years to present the truth, explode delusional accusations and unfounded against me and reveal the method of that witch hunt.” Security, he insisted, is the only reason for delay to face its three pending cases. Netanyahu’s legal team has alleged throughout this time that the trial could put their lives at risk, as well as that war management and tasks to recover the hostages that follow in Gaza made it impossible to prepare their intervention with judicial guarantees.
The cases
And what are they going? In case 1000, he is accused of fraud and abuse of trust in relation to accusations that he received gifts such as pure and champagne of foreign entrepreneurs.
In the 2000 case, he is also accused of fraud and abuse of trust and is accused of seeking favorable coverage in one of Israel’s main newspapers in exchange for limiting the circulation of one of the main rivals of the newspaper.
In the most serious case, the 4000 is accused of bribery, fraud and abuse of confidence for allegedly advancing his friend Shaul Elovitch, a shareholder of the Bezeq telecommunications company, regulatory benefits worth more than 250 million dollars then. In return, according to the accusation, Elovitch guaranteed a positive coverage of the prime minister in an online news site of his property called Walla! News. Elovitch has denied charges.
From the first moment, Netanyahu denied the facts and received the support of his followers, who ensure that it is an operation of the “judicial left” to get him out of power by legal means after not achieving it at the polls, while another sector demands his resignation and even accuses him of extending the ongoing conflicts to stay in office and far from jail.
