With Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit's decision to file an indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursuant to a hearing, Netanyahu's defense team has a few options available to them.
In the first stage, Netanyahu's attorneys will try to convince Mendelblit to provide them with the investigative materials prior to the elections. Mendelblit is currently weighing this request for two reasons, the first being that the hearing will be held after the elections, and the second, in order to prevent the leaking of investigative materials.
Regardless of when the prime minister's defense team receives the material, they will need somewhere between three to four months to study the materials and prepare for a hearing. Members of his defense team are also expected to request clarifications and additional materials.
The date of the hearing will be determined together with and largely dependent on the defense team, but the State Attorney's Office will also be determined to not to overly prolong the waiting period for the hearing.
In the next stage, following the hearing, the attorney general will require four months to reach his final decision, unless the defense team succeeds in pointing to certain points that were not examined and could have a substantial impact on the case.
At any rate, should the attorney general decide to provide Netanyahu's team with the investigative materials ahead of the elections, the decision to file an indictment will only be made in another eight months. If the materials are delivered after April 9, when the elections are set to be held, the decision will be made in another nine months, at least. The significance of all this is that we could a scenario in which the decision to put Netanyahu on trial could be expected to be made in 2020.
The law does not obligate a sitting prime minister to resign from office if an indictment is filed against them, but only following a conviction. The trial into Netanyahu's matter, with the mountains of evidence it entails, is expected to go on for years and therefore the resignation scenario following a conviction is likely irrelevant for the coming term, should Netanyahu indeed be the political leader tasked with forming the next government.
If indictments are filed against Netanyahu and if he is convicted in a court of law, what kind of sentence can the prime minister expect?
The maximum sentence for a bribery offense is 10 years in prison.
According to attorney Eyal Besserglick, an expert on white collar and criminal law who serves as the chairman of the Israel Bar Association's committee for criminal affairs, "This offense does not have a minimum threshold, and apparently, the court can also rule on community service for an offense." But he said that in recent years the courts have adopted a "strict policy" on these offenses.
Should the conviction pertain to fraud and breach of trust, the maximum sentence would be three years in prison. However, in a majority of cases, and in particular those concerning the lower threshold of the offense, courts tend to suffice with community service.
Besserglick notes that here too, though, there has been a recent trend of imposing harsher sentences, and even sending offenders to prison for such offenses. He further noted that no minimum penalty exists for such an offense.
