Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again requested this Monday that the Jerusalem district court postpone the early hours of a new judicial hearing scheduled for today, with the aim of being able to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the new head of the Mossad, Roman Gofman.
Netanyahu is scheduled to testify before the court today in one of the corruption proceedings that remain open against him. However, his request has been met with displeasure from the panel of judges, who have stressed that they have already acceded on numerous occasions to his requests to postpone or cancel scheduled hearings.
Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman recalled in court that "When security issues are involved, there is nothing we can do, but ceremonies? With all due respect, either the organizers of this event adjust their schedules or we will proceed," although for now the court has not communicated a definitive resolution on this new attempt at delay.
Days earlier, the leader had already submitted another request to be able to attend a second ceremony also scheduled for this Monday. In this case, the request was accepted, allowing him to be absent, something that, according to the newspaper "The Times of Israel," has contributed to significantly delaying the timelines of the proceedings he still has pending before the courts.
Netanyahu's schedule of appearances before the court began on December 10, 2024, after a judicial ruling determined that he must testify, even though his defense had proposed delaying these statements until at least March 2025.
Netanyahu is the first head of government in Israel's history to sit on the stand while still in office. The indictment formally attributes to him crimes of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate cases, as a result of the investigations initiated by former Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.
In April 2021, during the first session of the evidence presentation phase, the prosecution described a "serious case of regime corruption" in the corruption proceedings against the prime minister. Netanyahu, for his part, has vehemently rejected the charges and has described them as a "witch hunt" and a "judicial coup."
The most compromising file is the one known as 'Case 4000'. In it, he is accused of having promoted regulatory changes that favored the main shareholder of the telecommunications conglomerate Bezeq, Shaul Elovitch, in exchange for the news portal Walla offering favorable media coverage to his Government.