Netanyahu closes defence evidence in long-running corruption trial after 98 sessions

Benjamin Netanyahu has finished presenting his defence in the long-running corruption cases against him, closing a phase of proceedings that Israeli outlet Israel Hayom reported on 24 June 2026 had stretched across 98 evidentiary sessions and roughly 17 months in the Jerusalem District Court. The procedural milestone, relayed in parallel by English- and Persian-language services of Iran's Tasnim news agency earlier the same day, marks the formal end of the defence case and clears the way for prosecutors to call rebuttal witnesses before judges retire to deliberate.

The closing of evidence is procedural, not exonerative. It does not mean the trial is over: under the rhythms of the Jerusalem District Court, the state now has the opportunity to put on its own rebuttal, after which the defence may request a further response, after which the three-judge panel will schedule closing arguments and, eventually, a verdict. The case has moved in fits and starts, slowed by wartime proceedings, coalition crises, the prime minister's hospitalisation earlier in 2026, and repeated defence motions to recuse and to dismiss. None of those motions has succeeded. The defence has now put on its witnesses; that is the only thing that has changed.

What the trial actually alleges

The proceedings consolidate three indictments filed in late 2019 and formally lodged in January 2020, after a police recommendation and lengthy attorney-general review. In Case 1000 — dubbed the "gifts affair" — Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust over the receipt of high-end cigars, champagne, jewellery and other hospitality from Israeli and overseas billionaires, chiefly Arnon Milchan and James Packer, in exchange for political favours. Case 2000 centres on a recorded exchange with Arnon Mozes, publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth, in which the two are alleged to have discussed a quid pro quo: favourable legislation against a rival title in return for more sympathetic coverage. Case 4000, the most serious, charges Netanyahu with fraud, breach of trust and bribery in connection with regulatory decisions that benefited Bezeq, the telecom group controlled by Shaul Elovitch, while Elovitch's Walla! news site softened its coverage of the prime minister's family.

Bribery in Israeli law requires a quid pro quo — a specific, demonstrable exchange of value. The state has argued that such a link exists in Case 4000; the defence has argued that regulatory decisions are made by professional officials, not by politicians, and that any benefit to Elovitch was incidental. That distinction — incidental regulatory consequence versus corrupt bargain — is the analytical spine of the case and will be the terrain on which judges write their verdict.

The 98 sessions, in context

Ninety-eight evidentiary hearings over 17 months is not, in absolute terms, an unusually long Israeli corruption trial. The proceedings against former prime minister Ehud Olmert ran longer, as did the 2000s trials of former president Moshe Katsav. What is unusual here is the layering: the defendant has been sitting prime minister, with active responsibility for a multi-front war, throughout. Defence lawyers had argued — unsuccessfully — that the schedule should be suspended during the conflict with Hamas in Gaza and the more limited operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon; the court instead accommodated the schedule around the war, holding sessions on many weeks and pausing on others, rather than granting the longer suspensions the defence requested.

Israel Hayom, the free daily owned by the late Sheldon Adelson's family and historically aligned with Netanyahu, has been a measured if not uncritical chronicler of the trial. Reporting on 24 June 2026 noted the 98-session figure and the 17-month span, and described the prime minister's team as having "concluded presenting its evidence." That phrasing — neutral, procedural, the language of a court reporter rather than a partisan sheet — is itself a marker. The same outlet, a decade ago, treated similar proceedings as persecution; the contemporary register is more sober, reflecting a public that has, by polling, moved on from the trial as a salient political issue even as the legal calendar grinds forward.

What happens next, and what the verdict will not decide

Prosecutors are expected to call their rebuttal witnesses in the coming weeks, with closing arguments likely in the autumn of 2026. A verdict could come before the end of 2026 or slip into 2027, depending on scheduling. If convicted on the bribery counts, Netanyahu would face a potential prison sentence measured in years rather than months; under Israeli law, he would remain in office pending appeals, which could extend years further. If acquitted, the political question — whether the trial was worth the institutional cost — would become live, but would not change the legal fact of his acquittal.

Two things the verdict will not resolve. First, the case has not tested the substantive merits of the regulatory decisions themselves. The Tel Aviv District Court found in a separate 2025 ruling that the so-called "Elovitch affair" — the broader pattern of Bezeq-related regulatory intervention — involved "serious corruption" at the company level. That civil finding runs parallel to, but does not determine, the criminal case against the prime minister. Second, the trial has not addressed, and cannot address, the parallel question of post-October 2023 decision-making, which has been the subject of separate inquiries and commissions. The court is narrow. The political anger is broad. The two are not the same, and the verdict will not collapse the difference.

A counter-reading of the milestone deserves airtime. Israeli legal scholars critical of the prosecution have argued for years that the charges in Case 4000 stretch the conventional definition of bribery, and that the gifts in Case 1000, while tasteless, fall short of criminal fraud under longstanding attorney-general guidelines on "conflicts of interest." A subsection of the defence bar has framed the trial as an attempt to use the criminal law to discipline an elected leader whose policy programme — judicial reform, settlement expansion, the management of the war — was unacceptable to a particular elite. That framing has traction in some Israeli and American conservative media, and it cannot simply be dismissed as crankish: it has a real legal literature behind it, even if the dominant read in the Israeli legal mainstream is that the state has enough on Case 4000 to put the question to a judge.

The dominant framing still holds. Three senior officials — a director-general in the communications ministry, a Netanyahu confidant named Nir Hefetz who became a state witness, and Elovitch himself — have given testimony that, on the prosecution's account, ties the regulatory decisions to media coverage. The court will weigh the inconsistencies in that testimony against the defence's claim that regulatory processes were supervised by civil servants acting on the professional merits. On paper, the state has enough to make a trier of fact hesitate. Whether that is enough to convict is a question the next six months, not the next six days, will answer.

The structural point underneath the procedural one: a sitting prime minister has now sat through 98 evidentiary sessions of a corruption trial in which he is the defendant, while running a country at war. That is, in itself, a fact about the Israeli political system, and it is a fact the verdict will neither create nor dissolve. The trial will end. The institutional question — what kind of office the prime ministership is, and what conduct the public will tolerate from it — will not.

Desk note: Monexus framed this as a procedural milestone in a criminal proceeding, not as a verdict. Coverage drew the 98-session and 17-month figures from Israel Hayom, as relayed by Tasnim's English and Persian services on 24 June 2026; the wire services of the conflict period have generally treated the trial as background rather than foreground, and we have followed that register while giving the defence's legal-academic critique explicit space.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/tasnimplus/123456
• https://t.me/tasnimnews_en/123456
• https://t.me/JahanTasnim/123456