For the first time in Israel, a sitting prime minister will appear in court. At 3 p.m. Sunday, the trial of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is accused of crimes including bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, is scheduled to open.
Additional defendants in the case, Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes, and controlling shareholder in the Bezeq corporation Shaul Elovitch, as well as Iris Elovitch, are also slated to appear.
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Sunday's hearing will be technical and is scheduled to last only half an hour. The indictments will be read out, and the defendants will have to declare to the court that they understand the indictments against them. However, they are not required to plead guilty or innocent at this stage.
Video: Cameraman: Moshe Ben Simhon
A panel of three judges will preside over the trial: Rivka Friedman-Feldman, who is serving as head of the panel; Moshe Bar-Am, and Oded Shaham.
The opening day of the trial will be covered by dozens of Israeli and international news outlets, which were forced to reserve places, as the number of people allowed into the courtroom is restricted to avoid anyone spreading coronavirus.
The trial was supposed to begin on March 17, but the coronavirus outbreak caused it to be postponed.
Last week, Netanyahu asked the court for permission to be absent from the first day of the trial, and the court denied his request. However, it appears that he will not be required to attend every day of the trial and will appear in court only when his testimony is necessary or to be present for cross-examination.
Netanyahu's defense team is expected to ask the court to postpone the trial for another year, under the argument that it has yet to receive all the investigative materials. The attorneys might also ask the court to declassify certain details or pieces of evidence.
The second stage of the trial, expected to last several months, will include preliminary arguments by the defense, which will have 60 days to present its arguments. The prosecution will then have 60 days to respond. Only then will a date be determined for the court to deliberate and deliver a ruling.
The state wants the court to handle the cases in this order: 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 last.
Case 1,000, which centers on gifts Netanyahu allegedly received from Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and Australian billionaire James Packer; Case 2,000, which focuses on an illicit deal Netanyahu allegedly tried to strike with Mozes so as to ensure positive coverage; and Case 4,000, which centers on an alleged deal by which Elovitch, the controlling shareholder of Israeli telecom corporation Bezeq, ensured positive coverage of the Netanyahu family by the Walla news website, which Bezeq owns, in exchange for the prime minister promoting government regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the company.
The prosecution wants the court to meet three to four times a week on the Netanyahu cases, but Netanyahu's associates want to limit the number of hearings to one per week.
In the third, and main, stage of the trial, when evidence is presented, a total of 333 witnesses are on the roster to appear for the prosecution and the state.
In an optional fourth stage, Netanyahu can claim that there is no need of responding to the evidence presented as they have no bearing on the accusations against him, but there is little chance of this happening.
The fifth stage of the trial allows every defendant to present witnesses on his behalf and make their own arguments.
The sixth stage of the trial is devoted to summations.
The seventh stage of the trial is the ruling, in which the judges will determine on which, if any, of the counts they have found Netanyahu guilty. If he is not exonerated, he will then be sentenced.
The trial process is expected to take some three years, not including appeals.
Netanyahu is not the first Israeli leader to go on trial. Both former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former President Moshe Katsav went to prison in the 2010s – Olmert on corruption charges and Katsav for rape. But they stepped down to fight the charges.
As opposition leader in 2008, Netanyahu led the calls for Olmert to leave office, famously saying a leader "up to his neck" in legal troubles had no business governing a country.
But as the investigations have piled up, culminating with his indictment last November, Netanyahu has changed his tune. He has rejected calls to resign while repeatedly lashing out at the country's legal system.
He has targeted a former police chief and the current attorney general – both Netanyahu appointees – and the country's Supreme Court. Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit recently filed a complaint to police over anonymous threats sent to his mobile phone.
