Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in court on Monday for the fifth day of his cross-examination in Case 4000, one of the three cases against him, the day after submitting a request for a pardon to President Isaac Herzog.

The premier is on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in Case 4000, also known as the Bezeq-Walla case, which focuses on allegations that Netanyahu authorized regulatory decisions that financially benefited Bezeq telecommunications giant shareholder Shaul Elovitch by hundreds of millions of shekels.

In return, Netanyahu allegedly received favorable media coverage from the Walla news site, also owned by Elovitch.

Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and says all three cases were fabricated by the police and state prosecution in an attempted political coup. His pardon request Sunday featured no admission of guilt or contrition, but rather argued that it was in Israel’s national interest for him to be pardoned, so he could focus fully on running the country.

Monday’s hearing began with the premier’s attorney, Amit Hadad, asking the Jerusalem District Court to cancel the hearing scheduled for Tuesday due to what he said was a “political-security” item on his schedule. If the request were to be granted, Hadad said, Netanyahu would be willing to extend Wednesday’s hearing by an hour to partially make up the lost time.

The court accepted the request, meaning that the premier would only testify twice this week, as he has done every week since the court upped his hearings to three times a week in October.

A group of protesters was waiting for Netanyahu as he arrived at the Tel Aviv District Court, some of them wearing orange prison-style jumpsuits.

Two protesters, one in an orange jumpsuit and a mask of Netanyahu’s face and the other in a suit and a mask of Herzog’s........

© The Times of Israel