World
NewsOnScale Staff
October 3, 2026
Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial has been running since May 2020. He faces bribery, fraud, and breach of trust charges across three cases. The bribery charge alone carries up to ten years in prison.
The trial has been paused for COVID-19. It was paused after October 7, 2023. It was paused again this year citing the war with Iran. Each pause extended the timeline. Each extension kept Netanyahu in the courtroom of public opinion rather than a defendant's chair.
Critics, including Israeli legal scholars and opposition politicians, have raised a pointed question: does Netanyahu have a personal legal incentive to prolong a conflict that keeps pausing his criminal proceedings?
The argument is not that Netanyahu started the war to avoid trial. It is that a prime minister facing prison has every reason to prefer wartime emergency conditions over the return of normal judicial proceedings, and that this conflict of interest is worth examining openly.
The documented record: Netanyahu's trial was on a normal schedule before October 7. After October 7, the court suspended hearings citing wartime conditions. When hearings resumed in 2025, they moved slowly. This year, citing the war with Iran, hearings were paused again. His lawyers have also sought delays citing security concerns.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has expanded Israel's military operations rather than pursuing ceasefire agreements that might have ended the emergency conditions pausing his trial sooner. Multiple ceasefire proposals have collapsed, with Netanyahu's government cited by negotiators as a complicating factor.
His political survival also depends on staying in office. A conviction would end his career. Losing an election could accelerate the trial's conclusion. War, historically, benefits incumbent leaders in polls.
Netanyahu denies all charges and calls the prosecution an attempted coup. His office has dismissed any suggestion that military decisions are influenced by personal legal circumstances.
Israel's Supreme Court has not intervened to force the trial forward despite the delays. The attorney general, whom Netanyahu has reportedly sought to replace, has continued to pursue the case.
The trial is expected to resume with approximately 20 hearings before Israel's late October election. Both sides have been accused of using those hearings as campaign platforms rather than legal proceedings.
Six years in, the most powerful defendant in Israel is still on trial, still in office, still at war, and still not convicted.
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