Netanyahu's Trial & the Fight for Israel's Court

Netanyahu's trial is in its defense phase. He was indicted in 2019 in three cases. Case 1000 is fraud and breach of trust over luxury gifts from billionaires Arnon Milchan and James Packer, roughly 174,000 euros in cigars, champagne and jewelry. Case 2000 is the same charge over an alleged quid pro quo with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes: favorable coverage in exchange for weakening a rival paper. Case 4000 is the serious one: bribery, fraud and breach of trust over regulatory favors to Bezeq owner Shaul Elovitch in return for positive coverage on Walla. He denies everything and frames it as a judicial coup.

He finished his own testimony in June 2026 after ninety-eight hearings across eighteen months, and from October 4, the court moved to five hearing days a week to get through the remaining witnesses before presiding judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman retires in March 2028. Closing arguments haven't started. The judges have twice, in June 2023 and again in June 2026, told prosecutors the bribery count in Case 4000 is hard to prove and suggested dropping it. They haven't ordered it dropped, and removing it wouldn't end the case: the fraud and breach of trust counts would survive in all three^[1]. The defense has called former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit, who approved the indictment but now can't recall whether he explicitly greenlit the bribery wording; he says he kept it ambiguous on purpose to allow a broad probe, and Netanyahu's lawyers use that to argue the prosecution pressured him and hid evidence. If he's convicted on any count, prison becomes real^[2].

The pardon is the other front. Netanyahu submitted a formal request to President Herzog in November 2025, and in March the Pardons Department's review advised against it, finding it didn't meet the criteria. Herzog publicly pushed for plea-deal talks instead, reportedly telling a confidant he couldn't pardon someone who wouldn't admit guilt. Trump wrote to Herzog urging a full pardon and later called him a disgrace for not moving. Herzog's office said in February 2026 that he would decide by law, the good of the state and his conscience, 'without any influence from external or internal pressures.' His line that nobody, including a US president, can intervene in his discretion came in October 2026 and was about choosing who forms the next government, after Trump endorsed Netanyahu. Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana sent his own letter in October pressing Herzog, citing Mandelblit's testimony, though Ohana has no legal standing to make that request. As of this episode Herzog hasn't ruled, and Herzog holding that decision while Netanyahu campaigns is a live constitutional crisis nobody's really talking about^[3].

The Supreme Court fight is where it gets structural^[4]. In 2024 the High Court struck down the reasonableness amendment, the centerpiece of the 2023 overhaul, in an eight-to-seven ruling, the first time it invalidated an actual Basic Law. The judicial appointments law, passed in March 2025, restructures the selection committee, swaps the Bar Association's representatives for political appointees, and lowers the bar for a Supreme Court pick from seven of the committee's nine votes to six, which must include at least one coalition and one opposition representative and need none of the three justices. In June 2026 eleven justices heard challenges to it and nine of the eleven were critical; Court President Amit warned judges would have a political chip implanted in their body. That law only takes effect with the next Knesset.

The stakes are concrete. The court has four open seats, and five more justices retire during the next term, so up to nine of fifteen could turn over. Levin spent four years refusing to make Supreme Court appointments because he lacked a majority on the selection committee for his preferred candidates. Whoever controls that committee controls the court's character for a generation^[5], which is why I think the election was less about Gaza or Iran than about who holds the pen on those nine appointments.

Three camps are playing for institutional control. Netanyahu's coalition wants the court to stop blocking it. Yariv Levin's January 2023 plan covered judicial selection, a sixty-one-vote Knesset override of court rulings, curbs on judicial review, ministry legal advisers and the reasonableness doctrine; the law shielding a prime minister from being declared incapacitated was a separate coalition bill. Reasonableness passed in 2023, and the court struck it down, and the appointments law passed in March 2025 with a delayed trigger. In July 2026 the Knesset passed a law letting ministers reject the attorney general's binding legal opinions and giving the government control over who becomes attorney general. Netanyahu was absent for that vote, but he missed several other coalition votes that week, his absence may have been tied to the conflict-of-interest arrangement from his trial, and no coalition member voted against the law. Smotrich and Rothman want to go further: public hearings for Supreme Court nominees, an override clause so sixty-one Knesset votes can revive a struck-down law, ministers appointing their own legal advisers, and splitting the attorney general into separate government-counsel and prosecution roles. Implementing that package is their condition for joining any coalition.

The opposition's play is repeal and entrenchment^[6]. Eisenkot's Yashar wants to strike the overhaul laws and pass a Basic Law on legislation that strengthens the Knesset's own authority while keeping judicial review. Bennett has pledged to repeal everything, including the attorney general law, a bigger commitment than he'd made before, and Lapid and the center-left want a written constitution. Their logic is timing: once the overhaul laws take effect, reversing them gets much harder, because the new selection committee appoints the justices who'd be reviewing the repeal.

The court itself is the third actor, and it isn't a monolith. Twelve of fifteen justices affirmed the power to review Basic Laws, but the eight-to-seven split on reasonableness showed real internal tension. At the June 2026 hearing on the appointments law, Justice Mintz asked: 'are we in a situation that demands judicial review over a Basic Law, where the situation will be so terrible if this amendment doesn't get annulled?' He and Deputy President Sohlberg repeated their opposition to judicial review of Basic Laws. Court President Amit is the hawk. If the court strikes the appointments law, it triggers exactly the constitutional crisis the coalition has been courting, and my guess is the coalition's answer would be to ignore it or pack the court.

The case for each side is real. The coalition's is that elected majorities should be able to govern without the court blocking them; the opposition's is that the overhaul hands the government control of the body meant to check it, while the prime minister is on trial. One angle most coverage misses: top security officials, including the Shin Bet and IDF chiefs, reportedly warned Netanyahu for months that the internal rift was emboldening Israel's enemies. He fired Gallant for saying it publicly, then reversed under street pressure. If that causal chain holds, the judicial fight isn't adjacent to the security crisis; it helped create it^[7].