Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to the Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday morning to continue testifying in his criminal trial, after a two-month pause due to the war in Iran and ongoing security developments in the region.
The hearing marked Netanyahu’s first appearance on the witness stand since February 24, after repeated delays in the proceedings and a last-minute cancellation of Monday’s scheduled testimony. That cancellation came after Netanyahu’s attorney, Amit Hadad, submitted a request citing the prime minister’s security schedule.
Present in the courtroom on Tuesday were Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and Likud MKs Tally Gotliv, Gila Gamliel and Tsega Melaku, who came to show support for Netanyahu. Before the testimony began, representatives for the prosecution and defense met with the judges in chambers.
The cross-examination, led by prosecutor Yehudit Tirosh, resumed in Case 4000, the Bezeq-Walla affair, in which Netanyahu is accused of advancing regulatory decisions that benefited Shaul Elovitch, then the controlling shareholder of Bezeq, in exchange for favorable coverage on the Walla news site, which Elovitch controlled.
questioning focuseS on what prosecution says is supporting evidence
Netanyahu is charged in Case 4000 with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. He denies all charges and has repeatedly argued that the cases against him are politically motivated.
Much of Tuesday’s questioning focused on what the prosecution has described as supporting evidence for the alleged “guidance meeting” between Netanyahu and former Communications Ministry director-general Shlomo Filber, a central state witness in the case.
According to the prosecution, that meeting is one of the key factual anchors of Case 4000: the point at which Netanyahu allegedly directed Filber on matters that would later benefit Elovitch and Bezeq.
Tirosh returned to Filber’s “yellow notebook,” a notepad of handwritten notes that was found in the investigative materials after Filber’s original testimony. On one page, Filber wrote several lines under the heading “Prime Minister.”
When Filber was questioned again after the notebook was found, he said the page contained a cumulative list of tasks he had received from Netanyahu.
The prosecution’s position is that the top lines of the page match what Filber described as having been raised in the guidance meeting, including references to Elovitch, the completion of the Bezeq-Yes merger, and other communications issues. Some of those matters, the prosecution argued, were also consistent with issues Netanyahu himself said he discussed with Filber before Filber formally entered the position, including “media” and the name of then-minister Ofir Akunis.
The prosecution had already questioned Netanyahu on those upper lines before the war. On Tuesday, Tirosh moved to the continuation of the same page, focusing on other entries written by Filber under the heading referring to the prime minister, and presenting evidence meant to show that those tasks could only have come from Netanyahu.
Among the entries were “speak with Avichai about changing legislation for a minister in the ministry,” a reference understood in court to then-attorney-general Avichai Mandelblit; “Attorney Ran Shitrit”; “Nimrod Sapir”; “Broadcasting Authority - NIS 200 million, half a year”; and a sticky note attached to the page containing names of members of the Public Broadcasting Corporation council.
Tirosh pressed Netanyahu on the prosecution’s theory that Akunis was meant to receive a role inside the Communications Ministry framework, and that Netanyahu was involved in examining how powers in the ministry could be arranged to make that possible.
Filber had testified that Netanyahu told him to look into the matter. According to the prosecution, Filber then checked the possibility both with Mandelblit and with others regarding whether responsibilities inside the Communications Ministry could be divided or rearranged.
Tirosh confronted Netanyahu with his own previous testimony, in which he had said clearly that he knew Akunis wanted to be a minister in the Communications Ministry and that new legislation would be required. On Tuesday, however, Netanyahu said he did not remember the matter.
Netanyahu sought to explain the discrepancy by pointing to the passage of time and the intensity of the events since his earlier testimony.
“When I prepared for that hearing in March 2025, I remembered,” Netanyahu said. “Many, many things have happened since. I have nothing to hide here. So many things since then have demanded my attention in a dramatic manner.”
Tirosh pushed back, arguing that if the testimony was true then, it should remain true now, even if Netanyahu no longer recalled the details independently.
The questioning also turned to Ran Shitrit, an attorney and Likud activist who had worked with Akunis and later served in the Communications Ministry. Shitrit’s name appeared in Filber’s notes under the “Prime Minister” heading, and the prosecution argued that his inclusion supported Filber’s account that the matters listed on the page had come from Netanyahu.
In Filber’s cross-examination, he had said that either Netanyahu told him to bring Shitrit in and that Filber needed to be in the meeting, or that Filber himself had a problem with Shitrit and raised it with Netanyahu. Either way, Filber described the issue as the kind of employment matter that would have to come before Netanyahu himself, rather than being handled through ordinary human resources channels.
Netanyahu rejected the implication that the issue was connected to the telecommunications matters at the heart of Case 4000.
“I remember talking to Akunis about the media issue,” Netanyahu said, apparently referring to media diversity. “I never talked to him about the telecom issue.”
He later added that he did not remember the details because it had been a minor matter.
“Who can remember such a thing?” he said.
The hearing was paused around noon. Shortly before the break, an envelope was brought to Netanyahu in the courtroom.
Presiding Judge Rivka Friedman-Feldman later announced that Tuesday’s testimony would end at 2 p.m., two-and-a-half hours before it had been scheduled to conclude.
The shortened hearing came against the background of renewed tension over the pace of the prime minister’s testimony. Netanyahu’s trial began in 2020, and his own testimony began in December 2024. His cross-examination has since been repeatedly disrupted by war, diplomatic travel, security developments, and requests to cancel or shorten hearing days.
The court had previously moved to accelerate the proceedings, with Netanyahu expected to testify several days a week. But the two-month pause, Monday’s cancellation, and Tuesday’s shortened hearing again placed the schedule at the center of the case, as the judges, prosecution, and defense attempt to move through Netanyahu’s testimony before the trial enters its next stages.