Respect for all
The Age | Letters | 14 December 2025
If Bayside Council had re moved a teenage council volunteer who was wearing a Star of David necklace from its newsletter, there would have been justifiable cries of antisemitism. Some people need to realise that we live in a multicultural society and that every culture should be respected not just a chosen few.
Ivan Glynn, Vermont
Money better spent
As a resident of Bayside I am furious that ratepayers have paid for a council publication to be pulped and reprinted to erase the recognised contribution of Zaina Amro. That nine complainants can override our country’s pride in its diversity and inclusivity is very concerning. The not inconsiderable cost of this could have been spent on further library improvements which would recognise this young woman’s volunteer library work or on tree planting to benefit our community.
Helen Hook, Black Roc
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Israel targets senior Hamas commander in Gaza strike
Canberra Times / AAP | 14 December 2025
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9133277/israel-targets-senior-hamas-commander-in-gaza-strike/
The Israeli military have struck a car in Gaza City carrying senior Hamas commander Raed Saed, one of the architects of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, according to an Israeli defence official and Israeli media.
The strike on Saturday killed four people, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics whether Saed was among the dead.
The Israeli military said it had targeted a senior Hamas commander in Gaza City, without given a name or further details.
If Saed was killed, it would be the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
The Israeli defence official described Saed as the head of Hamas’ weapon manufacturing force.
Hamas sources have also described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen Al-Hadad.
Saed used to head Hamas’ Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best-equipped, those sources said.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led militants killed 1200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 70,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, health officials in Gaza say.
The October 10 ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.
But violence has not completely halted. Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed at least 386 people in strikes in Gaza since the truce. Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire began, and it has attacked scores of fighters.
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Israel says its military killed Hamas commander Raed Saed in Gaza City strike
If Saed is dead he would be most senior militant to be killed since October ceasefire, in attack on car that reportedly left four dead
The Guardian / Reuters | 14 December 2025
The senior Hamas commander Raed Saedhas been killed in a strike on a car in Gaza City, the Israeli military said on Saturday.
The attack killed four people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
“In response to the activation of a Hamas explosive device that wounded our forces today … prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz instructed the elimination of the terrorist Raed Saed, head of Hamas’ force buildup,” the prime minister and the defence minister said in a joint statement.
The Israeli military described Saed as “one of the architects” of the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza. The military earlier on Saturday said two reserve soldiers were lightly injured after the device detonated “during an operation to clear the area” in southern Gaza.
Saed’s death would be the most significant assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
An Israeli defence official said Saed had been targeted in the attack, describing him as the head of Hamas’s weapons manufacturing force.
Hamas sources have described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen al-Hadad.
Saed used to head Hamas’s Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best equipped, those sources said.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 70,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, health officials in Gaza said.
The 10 October ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.
But violence has not completely halted. Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed at least 386 people in strikes in Gaza since the truce. Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire began, and it has attacked scores of fighters.
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New Israeli barrier will slice through precious West Bank farmland
Palestinians who have worked the ‘breadbasket’ area for generations face being replaced by Israeli settlers
The Guardian |Julian Borger & Quique Kierszenbaum | 13 December 2025
The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.
The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel right through the area.
Lawyers for the Atouf village council have lodged an appeal, but long and bitter experience has taught Palestinians here to have low expectations of Israeli courts.
“The Israeli military can do anything they like. They don’t care about the law or anything else,” said Ismael Bsharat, a local farmer.
Similar eviction notices had been delivered on the same day all along an almost 14-mile (22km) strip of Palestinian farmland running north to south through Atouf, tracing out the route of the planned road and fence. And this week it became clear that this abrupt gash across Palestinian land was the first section of a new line of division that would redraw the map of the West Bank.
This week, Israel’s defence ministry made clear that this would mark only the first section of a new 5.5bn-shekel (£1.3bn) barrier that will eventually run 300 miles, from the Golan Heights on the Syrian border to the north all the way down to the Red Sea near Eilat. Labelled “Crimson Thread” by the Israeli military, the barrier will split countless Palestinian communities along its route.
The army says the barrier is being built for security reasons, but human rights activists say there has been only one lethal incident anywhere near Atouf in recent years in which an Israeli was killed. They argue the real motive is land seizure and the further strangling of Palestine’s prospects as a viable state.
“It is happening all through the Jordan valley, especially in the north. Israel is pushing forward, and accelerating the ethnic cleansing of this area,” said Dror Etkes, an Israeli activist who is the founder of the Kerem Navot organisation, which monitors Israeli land policy in occupied Palestine.
Israel has consistently rejected accusations of ethnic cleansing from Israeli and international human rights organisations, including UN rapporteurs, dismissing them as fabricated propaganda. It also denies the colonisation of occupied territory by settlers is illegal under international law.
Etkes said almost all (85%) of the 1,000 dunams (100 hectares) subjected to the initial round of eviction orders around Atouf were privately owned. These fields are among the most fertile in the West Bank, their rich dark-brown soil built up over millennia by tributaries flowing east to the River Jordan. The area has long been one of Palestine’s breadbaskets.
Most of the affected families had farmed the land for generations, and some had bought new parcels at high prices in recent years. All held title deeds, but none of that is likely to alter the outcome of the looming land grab.
Lawyers for the local Palestinian municipality lodged an appeal against the eviction in an Israeli court but had received no response by the end of this week. The expectation is that Israeli settlers will take over the excised land. A new settlement is planned just west of the new military road.
Across the West Bank, settlements are being planned and built at an unprecedented rate. According to the Peace Now advocacy group, tenders have been published for more than 5,600 housing units so far this year – an all-time record and 50% more than the previous peak in 2018.
Those are only the officially endorsed settlements. New settler outposts (often just a small cluster of huts or portable buildings) are springing up along the valley at an accelerating pace. Though officially unauthorised, they are enabled in practice by the army and police, backed by far-right members of the governing coalition.
At least one Palestinian farmer in Atouf has already begun moving his livestock in anticipation of eviction, but Bsharat said he would stay put and see what happens. He has little choice. On a winter evening this week, he was going to market with boxes of fresh green peppers grown in his plastic-sheet greenhouses. All his 12 dunams (1.2 hectares) of land lie east of the proposed military road and barrier, and are fed by water pipes running from the hilltops to the west. Those will all be severed when the army arrives to build the road and the barrier.
“What can I do? I can’t farm without water,” Bsharat said.
Abdullah Bsharat, the village council leader (who is from the same extended family as Ismael) predicted that up to 40 families from Atouf would be cut off from the village and their water supply.
“All these families have title deeds,” he said. “They grow grapes, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, bananas, za’atar and olives. This land is very rich and that is the reason it is being taken. The whole aim is to take it over for settlers to use it.”
The council leader said he had been told by Israeli officers that the road and barrier would together be 50 metres wide, but Palestinian buildings or farmwork would not be allowed along a 200-metre cordon on either side. There was no official confirmation from the army of such a wide exclusion zone, but if true it would greatly increase the economic damage inflicted on Atouf.
At one point along its course the planned barrier will loop around and completely enclose a Palestinian sheep herding community at Khirbet Yarza, who have so far resisted increasing pressure from settlers and the army to move off their 400 dunams of land,. It is not clear if they will be left any means to get in and out of the fence that will be built around them.
The “Crimson Thread” plan put forward this week by Israel’s defence ministry presented the current barrier as just the first part of a vast undertaking, walling off the Jordan valley from the rest of the West Bank, to “strengthen national security and strategic control of the eastern border”.
Maj Gen Eran Ofir, the senior defence ministry official responsible for building walls and barriers, said: “The security barrier whose construction we began today will extend over approximately 500km along the entire eastern border of the state of Israel.”
He added: “It will be a smart border, which will include a physical fence and a collection tool with intelligence sensors, radars, cameras, and advanced technologies.” Ofir said work had begun on two sections of the overall scheme, without giving details. The other section could be a military road started last year further north along the Jordan valley, around the villages of Bardala and Kardala.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said: “The new barrier will strengthen settlement along the border, significantly reduce arms smuggling into the hands of terrorists in Judea and Samaria, and will deal a severe blow to the efforts of Iran and its proxies to establish an eastern front against the state of Israel.”
According to the Times of Israel, citing Israel Defense Forces sources, the initial project around Atouf was conceived after a single security incident: the killing in August 2024 of a 23-year-old Israeli, Yonatan Deutsch, in a drive-by shooting by Palestinian militants along Route 90, which runs along the Jordan valley floor.
Etkes said there had been more Palestinian militant attacks in other areas of the West Bank. What distinguished the area around Atouf was not the security risk but the quality of its farmland, he added.
He said: “They are using this incident as a pretext in order to take over tens of thousands of dunams of land, and to push Palestinian communities further out of the Jordan valley.”
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Netanyahu’s corruption trial has become a struggle for Israel itself
Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents say he is an “enemy of the state”. His supporters say he is all Israel has.
ABC | Matthew Doran | 14 December 2025
Walking towards Tel Aviv’s District Court, the beats of a snare drum and shouting through a megaphone could be heard from a block away.
It was a sunny November morning and a small group, at least by recent Israeli standards, had gathered outside the building dressed in orange jumpsuits, reminiscent of prison attire seen on television and in movies.
Their chanting cut through the rumble of the morning rush hour, delivering a scathing character assessment of the man who was due to appear inside within the hour.
“The government is criminal, number one is the accused,” they yelled.
“We won’t surrender to the enemy of the state.”
For the better part of a year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been giving evidence in his long-running corruption trial inside the courthouse.
For a few hours a day, two to three days a week, Netanyahu has faced a grilling by lawyers in a high-security underground courtroom, which had previously been used for trials involving organised crime figures.
And for the better part of a year, this group of protesters has been there too, ready to press their case that Netanyahu is guilty in the court of public opinion.
“They should be ashamed of themselves for that pathetic demonstration,” Tally Gotliv, an outspoken member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, told the ABC as she was heckled entering the building.
The prime minister does not run the gauntlet like his supporters do and is whisked into the building through a side car park.
Netanyahu was charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust back in 2019, making him the first sitting prime minister in Israeli history to face criminal charges while in office.
His backers — including US President Donald Trump — view the trial as a witch hunt, often using the term “lawfare” to describe what they say is the weaponisation of Israel’s legal system to target the country’s longest-serving prime minister on exaggerated charges.
Trump has even called on Israel’s president directly to pardon Netanyahu — a request Netanyahu has now made himself.
But the prime minister’s detractors argue this is the system finally catching up to a ruthless political operative, obsessed with the trappings of public life and prepared to do anything to hold on to power.
‘Completely devoured’ in the deep state
Netanyahu is facing three separate cases.
One accuses him of receiving a systematic supply of gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — such as champagne, cigars and jewellery — in exchange for political favours. Among the wealthy businessmen named in the trial is Australian billionaire James Packer, who has denied any wrongdoing.
The other two cases allege Netanyahu sought favourable coverage in the Israeli press, by tweaking legislation and regulations to benefit the wealthy owners of media outlets.
The prime minister has rejected all of the allegations, saying the gifts were received because of his “deep friendship” with the businessmen involved. And on receiving more supportive reporting in the media, he insists that never eventuated.
He has also gone as far as to claim the “deep state” is trying to undermine him.
“Inside the courtroom we learned … that he is completely devoured in this conspiracy theory,” said Oren Persico, a staff writer with independent Israeli outlet The Seventh Eye.
“At least that’s what he says, I don’t know if it’s true — but he says that he believes that the Israeli media and the corrupt Israeli police and the corrupt Israel attorney general and other parts of our old establishment colluded against him to take him down.”
The trial began back in 2020, but it was about this time last year the prime minister was called to the stand for the first time. Since then Netanyahu has given more than 60 days of testimony, and it is estimated there could be a few dozen more sessions to go.
His testimony has been drawn out in part because of the glacial pace of the Israeli justice system, but mainly due to his need to juggle court appearances with his job leading a nation at war.
Persico is one of the few Israeli journalists to have been in the court for almost every one of the prime minister’s appearances.
He described the mood in the room as tense — and not just because of the attitude of Netanyahu when questioned by lawyers about the ins and outs of his dealings with billionaire businessmen.
“I was photographed by one of the supporters of Netanyahu, and then he put my photo online and encouraged his followers to ridicule me,” Persico told the ABC in his Tel Aviv flat.
“It’s very difficult. It gets under your skin. I know of reporters who decided not to come anymore to cover the trial because of the abuse they were suffering.”
But he says the difficult relationship between Netanyahu and the media is not new.
“I remember in 1999, just before he lost [the Israeli election] the first time, he used to accuse the media that they’re against him because they’re afraid that he will win,” he said.
“It just became more and more extreme ever since.”
The juggle of running the country and being defendant in a trial
There is a yawning chasm between the positions of those who support Netanyahu and those who want to see him convicted — but on one issue, they are united.
Both camps argue the prime minister’s appearances in court have been a distraction from dealing with matters of state, such as the war in Gaza.
The remedy to that, however, is where they differ.
Netanyahu’s testimony has been limited to two or three days a week, usually from 9am through until around midday. But he has also frequently been given special dispensation to cut short or cancel his appearances to deal with national security or diplomatic matters.
“You have to remember that he said that he could do both things, right? Be a prime minister and stand trial,” Persico said.
One front which has opened up in wrangling over the Netanyahu trial is in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. A member of his coalition drafted two bills to give politicians the ability to halt a criminal trial — such as the one the prime minister is facing.
Pressure has also mounted on Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, the public service’s chief lawyer, to intervene. She has, so far, withstood the pressure coming from the government.
The Netanyahu government has tried, and failed, to kick her out of the role; so now, according to Persico, it is attempting to change her role instead.
“What they’re trying to do now is split her functions so she won’t be the head of the prosecution and limit her standing in government,” Persico said.
“If they take away from her the ability to decide which criminal course to proceed and which criminal trial to withhold, they can give it to some yes man and he will just declare a mistrial and cut it off.”
The other option splitting Netanyahu’s supporters and his detractorshas been for the prime minister to resign from office, which he has refused to do despite the insistence from his political opponents.
Eliad Shraga, who runs the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, said it was “abnormal” that an indicted prime minister was still running the country.
“This is something lunatic,” he said.
“In every normal country, such a gentleman will step down from his seat and won’t run a country, especially not a country in a state of emergency, especially not a country which has faced such a bloody war in the last two years.”
Shraga cited former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s decision to resign from office in 2009 due to a corruption probe as setting the example for how a leader should act.
Olmert was later found guilty, and spent 16 months in jail.
“At the end of the day, these people are sitting in the war cabinet, these people are sending our kids to the battlefields,” Shraga said.
“We deserve better leadership, people with clean hands.”
While the debate over his corruption trial is dominating the media, other charges facing Netanyahu outside of Israel have slipped off the agenda.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu last November, accusing him of war crimes in Gaza, such as using starvation as a weapon of war.
The warrant means, technically, more than 120 countries are required to arrest the prime minister, should he enter.
But it has not stopped him travelling to places such as the United States with ease, to meet with the president in Washington and speak at the United Nations in New York. Some countries have explicitly said they would arrest him, while others including Australia have been deliberately vague about it — suggesting it is unlikely he would even travel there.
Netanyahu, along with his political backers, have rubbished the warrant — and it has likely fuelled his supporters’ belief that there is an international conspiracy to bring him down.
Claims the ‘deep state’ fabricated the evidence
Among those who believe the charges against the prime minister go beyond matters of personal conduct is Moshik Kovarsky, a rank-and-file member of the Likud party.
He leads a group called The 315 Project, which has sought to debunk the allegations against the prime minister. According to the project’s website, volunteers described as Citizens for Truth have trawled through the documents and concluded the claims do not stack up.
“It’s not just about one person, Benjamin Netanyahu,” Kovarsky said from his home in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv.
“It’s about the whole legal system, trying to take over the elected government, basically twist the will of the people.
“And the whole thing that people are kind of ridiculing, deep state, that’s really what we see here.”
His suggestion of the “deep state” taking over is based on accusations public servants are wielding too much power in Israel, and trying to thwart the ability of politicians to act as they see fit.
His criticism extends to judges too, who he said were overstepping the boundary of their role.
While those claims may seem, on face value, to be fringe views, they have permeated some quarters of the Israeli political class, and regularly feature in Netanyahu’s own speeches.
The prime minister has railed against calls for a court-appointed inquiry into the failures which allowed the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas to happen, insisting its findings would be “predetermined”.
He has also accused the media of cooperating with the “deep state” to create scandals involving his government.
Kovarsky said his group’s analysis of the evidence showed claims Netanyahu received favourable media coverage in exchange for legislative changes were untrue, and suggestions he had received expensive gifts of champagne and cigars had been grossly exaggerated.
“It’s not that he’s immune from mistakes, everybody makes mistakes,” Kovarsky said.
“But I think, especially we can see in the last two years after the big hit we got on October 7 … he really saved the country.”
The ABC sought interviews with a number of Netanyahu’s supporters in the Knesset. No-one was available.
Kovarsky was who the Likud party’s spokesperson suggested we speak to instead.
The Trump intervention
It is highly unusual for a foreign leader to weigh in on cases before another’s country’s legal system. But Donald Trump is not known for adhering to norms.
The US president has repeatedly called for the case against Netanyahu to be dropped — first issuing his criticism on social media in June, then making quips about the situation during a speech to the Knesset in October, and finally writing to President Isaac Herzog in November.
“It is time to let Bibi unite Israel by pardoning him, and ending that lawfare once and for all,” Trump wrote.
Each time Trump commented on the case, Netanyahu was effusive in his thanks for the support. But he was also insistent he would not be applying for a pardon himself, particularly if it meant admitting any guilt.
Throughout the trial, his comments have also suggested he thought a pardon would be unnecessary.
“For eight years I have been waiting to dismantle the absurd and baseless accusations made against me,” he said the day before he began giving evidence in December 2024.
“For eight years, I have been waiting to expose the system, this brutal witch hunt.”
So when his lawyers formally asked for a pardon in November, it sparked speculation that perhaps his legal team felt the case was not going its way in court.
It could have also hinted at a broader political play.
The act of asking the president for clemency resonates with Netanyahu’s base, both inside the Knesset and among the general public, who believe he is the victim.
If Herzog rejects the request, more fuel would also be injected into the argument of the “deep state” acting against the prime minister.
For his part, Israel’s president seems to be trying to calm expectations already, saying the pardon request is “clearly provoking debate and is deeply unsettling for many people in the country”.
“I have already clarified that it will be handled in the most correct and precise manner,” Herzog has said.
“I will consider solely the best interest of the State of Israel and Israeli society.”
The president’s decision would also be subject to challenge in the country’s Supreme Court.
The art of distraction
Netanyahu, one of the great survivors in Israeli politics, is seen as a master of the art of distraction.
A former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in the late 1980s, he moved into domestic politics in the 90s. After first becoming prime minister in 1996, he was defeated in the 1999 elections.
Benjamin Netanyahu thanking supporters after his election loss in 1999. (Reuters)
Allegations of corruption had followed him during his first time in office. He spent almost four years out of politics, before returning as finance minister in the government of Ariel Sharon in 2003.
In 2009 he managed to return to the nation’s top job, which he held for 12 years. It was during that time that the current corruption charges first surfaced, before he was toppled in June 2021.
But soon after, he managed to secure enough support in the Knesset to return as prime minister — his sixth term beginning in December 2022.
That moment seems like a lifetime ago, considering everything that has happened since.
In 2023 his government passed a bill that made it harder to remove a prime minister from office. Declaring a prime minister “incapacitated” can now only be done on physical and mental grounds, rather than other things — such as being busy tied up with legal matters in court.
“He changed the rules of the game during the game. And he’s an expert in doing that,” Shraga said.
“We are becoming a theocracy, we are becoming a monarchy, we’re becoming an autocracy — you can call it whatever you want, but this is not a liberal democracy.”
His government also proposed changes to the judicial system that would have limited the powers of the Supreme Court and given the government of the day more sway over judicial appointments. That reform was eventually shelved, but the damage was done.
The controversial judicial package spurred hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take to the streets, claiming a government coup. The survivor was on the ropes.
And then the man who had always presented himself as the only person able to safeguard Israel’s security presided over the deadliest day in the country’s history, as Hamas launched its October 7, 2023 attacks.
The domino effect began. Hezbollah in Lebanon launched attacks on Israel in response to the war in Gaza, with the Houthis in Yemen also firing missiles in solidarity with Hamas. Israeli forces invaded parts of Syria as the Assad regime fell in late 2024, and struck Iran’s nuclear and military facilities, prompting a 12-day war in mid-2025.
Netanyahu’s critics have frequently accused him of prolonging and starting wars to shore up his political fortunes, and distract from personal problems — like the corruption trial.
And now, throwing the prospect of a pardon into the mix would help take some of the attention away from a number of contentious matters.
One is the demand for an independent inquiry into the failures leading to October 7 — something the prime minister stands accused of trying to water down, to absolve himself of responsibility.
There is also the controversial proposal to reinstate exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox community from serving in the nation’s military — an issue tearing at his political coalition and still without resolution, which has angered a war-weary public.
‘One bloc’
Polling released as soon as the pardon was requested shows the public is divided.
Israel’s public broadcaster, KAN, reported 38 per cent of Israelis supported the move, while commercial network Channel 12 found the figure was at 36 per cent — although it jumped two points if coupled with a commitment to leave public office.
Former prime minister and aspiring candidate in the next election, Naftali Bennett, took to social media to back a pardon deal, as long as Netanyahu stepped down.
“In recent years, Israel has been led to chaos and to the brink of a civil war that threatens the very existence of the state,” he said.
“This way we will be able to put it behind us, unite, and together rehabilitate the state.”
At the end of a press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last Sunday, when he was first questioned about his request for a pardon, Netanyahu said he would not retire in order to secure it.
“They’re concerned with my future,” he quipped to the chancellor as local journalists threw questions to him.
“Well, so are the voters, and they’ll decide, obviously.”
Australian politicians are fond of citing former prime minister John Howard, who once said “politics is governed by the iron laws of arithmetic”.
While Australia is still largely dominated by Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals — however diminished the latter two are based on recent electoral failures — the situation is far more precarious in Israel.
The governing Netanyahu coalition, often described as the most right-wing in Israeli history, is currently made up of five different parties. As a bloc, it delivers him the support of 60 members of the 120-seat Knesset.
There are more than half a dozen disparate opposition parties. The largest and most vocal are highly critical of Netanyahu and his policies, but do not necessarily work together to provide a viable alternative to his rule.
“Unfortunately, we’ve got a very weak opposition which can’t deal with [the government],” Shraga said.
Outside the courtroom in November, one of the protesters’ placards read: “One bloc, that’s the way to win.”
Supporters say Netanyahu is ‘irreplaceable’
In a tense moment outside the Tel Aviv District Court that day, a patient from a hospital across the road walked over to confront the protesters over the noise they were making.
One of the group took the patient’s walking stick, only handing it back when police stationed outside the court intervened.
The patient, Yossi Biton, told the ABC outside the courtroom that he supported Netanyahu.
“These people are sick people,” he argued, insisting that the public should be allowed to decide on Netanyahu’s future.
“I have a cigar in my home, and I drink sometimes champagne — this is the trial.
“People, they like to drink in Australia … but in Israel maybe the prime minister cannot drink.”
Another onlooker, Iris Pfeffer, had a much less dismissive view of the trial.
“There have been many prime ministers I didn’t agree with, but they all thought of Israel,” she said.
“Bibi is the first one who thinks about Bibi only, Israel can be burned.
“He is corrupted, he is to blame for October 7, and he’s got to leave — if he was a moral person, he would do it by himself, he wouldn’t drag us to this scene.”
One Netanyahu supporter, Rafael Shamir, who was standing next to placards saying “Israel loves Bibi”, criticised the protesters for likening Netanyahu to Nicolae Ceaușescu, the former dictator of Romania.
Ceaușescu was overthrown after more than two decades in office, and executed three days later along with his wife.
“We definitely do refer to [Netanyahu] as the tyrant,” protester Ido said in response to Rafael, speaking over each other while the ABC was interviewing them.
Netanyahu supporters, including members of the public, try to attend the court to support him each day.
But unless they are on the list of registered observers, they cannot gain access to the public gallery.
“I heard there is a demonstration, so I took a day off work to be here,” Gavriel Abitbul told the ABC.
“I think he is the number one prime minister, he is irreplaceable — give me one name of someone who can replace him?”
And that could be the key issue: who will be strong enough to challenge the prime minister at the next election?
A looming election
The next election is due by October 2026, and there is no chance the trial would have ended by then.
When Netanyahu’s evidence wraps up, which could be next year, there are still dozens more witnesses left to go. According to Persico, legal experts estimate it could take about two more years.
Polling as recently as Friday by Israeli network Channel 12 said that if an election were held today, despite a small drop in support, Netanyahu’s Likud party would remain the largest party — but his coalition would struggle to retain control of the Knesset.
Persico believes in the lead-up to the election, the trial is going to benefit both sides.
“Netanyahu [will use] the trial to rally up his base, to present himself as a victim of the deep state,” he said.
“It will help his supporters rally up in order to vote for Netanyahu and it will help his opponents that think that he’s a corrupt politician who should be out regardless of what’s going on in Gaza.”