What’s happened: The Knesset passed the Death Penalty for Terrorists bill into law last night, codifying into law what had been for years a slogan of the far-right. Opposition party Yisrael Beiteinu, an early pioneer of the slogan that even in its days as part of a coalition never seriously advanced the proposal, supported the bill. United Torah Judaism, an ultra-orthodox party inside the coalition, opposed it.

• The law has drawn the ire of liberals in Israel and nearly all of Israel’s allies. It calls for a mandatory death penalty for those convicted of terrorist murder of Israelis.
• The law is not expected to survive challenge in the Israeli Supreme Court, though as the legislation itself is largely understood to be populistic rabble-rousing, this may be the point.
• Among its many weaknesses before judicial review: the distinctions it makes between crimes in the West Bank and inside Israel, the mandatory nature of the penalty (rather than execution being a maximum sentence), and the very fact of bringing a form of civilian law into the West Bank that isn’t limited only to Israeli citizens.
• Nearly every professional body in Israel opposed the legislation. The National Security Council, a body inside the Prime Minister’s Office, warned that aspects of it contradicted international law. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that it could put Israel in violation of treaty commitments.  Justice Ministry officials have also noted problematic the application of civilian legislation in the West Bank to non-Israelis (since 1967, an emergency order has allowed Israeli legislation to apply to Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, but the Knesset has largely refrained from legislation that directly applies to the Palestinians).
• As a result, it is highly likely that the Supreme Court will determine that this new law is illegal, which would only add to the ongoing tension between the current government and the court.      
• Itamar Ben-Gvir, the politician most associated with the bill, was seen in Knesset opening champagne to celebrate the bill’s passage, an image that rankled many in Israel not just for its poor taste and bad decorum, but also because it later emerged that at the time that was going on, senior officials already knew what the public did not yet know, namely that four IDF soldiers had been killed in combat.

What’s happened: The budget deadline is perhaps the most urgent economic issue connected to the war in Iran, but it is far from the only one, or even the most significant.

• Fighting the war — on multiple fronts — is itself very expensive. Writing in Yediot Ahronot, Sever Plocker estimates, using figures from the Twelve Day War last year, that direct war expenditures can amount to 60 billion shekels per month. The loss of output from the partial shutdown of the economy amounts to some 30 billion shekels. Taken together with the costs of recovery and reconstruction from war damage, the war’s direct costs easily top 100 billion shekels (almost £25 billion) for each month that it rages.
• Direct costs to the US are enormous in absolute terms ($11 billion dollars so far, according to an estimate in this morning’s New York Times), but unlike in Israel, negligible as a portion of total economic output.
• The war threatens to impact the global economy too in ways which will affect Israel as well. Energy market disruptions could send the global economy into a recession, while a spike in energy prices could set in motion price inflation.
• On the budget itself, the cabinet met Wednesday on Zoom and agreed to add 28 billion shekels to the 2026 defence budget. The deficit target was raised to 5.1% from 3.9%.
• The budget also included a large amount set aside to “coalition funds,” the local euphemism for direct earmarks for the Haredi sector and West Bank settlers. This was already in the vicinity of 5 billion shekels and in the new budget approaches 6 billion. Israeli commentators speculated that this is what made possible the agreement of the Ultra-orthodox parties to vote for the budget despite not getting the conscription law, which had been their principal legislative priority for this Parliament.
• Opposition MK Gilad Kariv of the Democrats described the budget as a “looting budget,” because it was, in his words, “the seizure of property and money in wartime.”

What’s happened: The coalition survived a budget vote in Parliament yesterday when a first reading of the 2026 budget passed by a 62 to 55 majority.

• The ultra-Orthodox parties had threatened to boycott the vote and had, until yesterday, refused to support the budget without  securing a new bill on draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox public first.
• The three ultra-Orthodox parties are the Sephardic Shas party, as well as the two Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox parties, Degel Ha-Torah and Agudat Yisrael, which together run on a joint list known as United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Agudat Yisrael is the party of the Hasidic community and Degel Ha-Torah of the non-Hasidic Ashkenazi Haredi community, known informally as ‘Lithuanians.’
• A vote scheduled for earlier this week had to be scuttled once it became clear that the coalition did not have a majority. Wednesday’s vote was made possible by Degel Ha-Torah’s decision to support the budget even without a final agreement on the conscription bill. Shas followed suit (though its leader Aryeh Deri was absent at the vote), but Agudat Yisrael did not vote with the coalition.
• The chairman of Agudat Yisrael Yitzchak Goldknopf tied his party’s decision to abstain from the vote to his dissatisfaction with the steps taken against ultra-Orthodox draft-dodgers in the absence of a new law exempting them from service. “We cannot stand by,” he said in the Knesset debate. “This government will be remembered as the one who puts young men behind bars.”
• Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich hailed the new budget and the performance of the Israeli economy in general. “After two years of a costly war, the State of Israel is a powerhouse of strength,” he told members at the opening of yesterday’s parliamentary debate. “We predict a 5.2 percent growth in GDP in the coming year. Inflation is returning to the target range, between 2% and 2.5%, we are curbing the cost of living and preserving the value of the money of Israeli citizens.”
• Opposition MK’s slammed the budget, with Yair Lapid describing it is as “unhinged” and another member of his party criticising in particular the record-breaking 7.5 billion-shekel allocation of “coalition funds,” the Israeli euphemism for direct political earmarks which mostly benefit the ultra-Orthodox community and West Bank settlers.

Context: Passing a first reading was a major hurdle for the 2026 budget and for the governing coalition in general. By law the Finance Committee is assigned 60 days to review the budget between the first and second reading. If the Knesset cannot pass a budget in its final form by March 31, parliament is automatically dissolved and new elections are scheduled within two months. In this year’s case, that would be only a minor drama as elections are currently scheduled for no later than October of this year.

• When no budget is in effect, the state operates by the so-called “one twelfth rule,” whereby all outlays from the last agreed budget are maintained on a month-to-month basis until a new budget is passed. In 2020, Israel operated on such a continuation budget for the entire fiscal year.
• The current budget proposal projects 812 billion shekels (about £190 billion) in expenditures, of which 112 billion shekels (about £26 billion) is slated for defence. There will be an operating deficit of about 3.9% of GDP, significantly lower then the figures for 2025 (4.7%), 2024 (6.8%), and 2023 (4.2%), but still much higher than the operating deficit during 2002, the last full year before the war in Gaza broke out, when it stood at 1.9% of GDP. In 2020, the year of the pandemic, the deficit was a staggering 11.4% of GDP.
• The political drama in the lead-up to the budget vote had little to do with the actual budget and more to do with the contentious efforts by the government to come up with a compromise on ultra-orthodox draft exemptions. Though no final compromise was reached, negotiations with the Chair of the Foreign and Defence Committee and the Committee’s legal counsel on a few controversial passages in the text of a draft form of that bill reached a breakthrough on Tuesday. 
• The current version of the conscription bill would grant a blanket exemption for full-time yeshiva students and set modest targets for drafting ultra-Orthodox men who are not enrolled in full-time study. There are currently 80,000 military-age ultra-Orthodox men who have avoided entirely national service. The IDF says it needs at 12,000 to meet its current manpower shortage.
• The version of the bill currently being advanced would ostensibly force a number close to that (but still smaller) to enlist, however, as critics point out, many of the legal sanctions for evading the draft, such as a cut in daycare subsidies for fathers who avoid mandatory services, would become dead letters, almost guaranteeing no real enforcement of the draft requirement. The bill would also end legal sanctions against those who dodged the draft in the year leading up to the bill as well. In its current form, it is likely to be challenged in court — and overturned.
• The Committee’s legal counsel had earlier blocked text that the coalition MK’s favoured with the warning that in its current form, the law would easily be struck down by the Supreme Court as violating the equality provisions of Israel’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws. The exact phrasing of the new compromise solution is not yet known, but is widely expected to be struck down anyway on similar grounds.
• Historically in Israel, coalitions are fractious with different factions functioning at cross purposes with each other. The current narrow, right-wing, coalition in power since the election of 2022 has been unusually solid and stable, with few major areas of disagreement despite being remarkably unpopular in public opinion polls since its first months in power. The issue of draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox public has been one of the only issue that has emerged as a major point of contention inside the otherwise relatively united coalition.

Looking ahead: Following the successful vote last night, the budget bill moves back to the Knesset Finance Committee. It will need to pass a second and third reading in the plenum to become law.

• Even with a budget, the coalition will still need to conjure a compromise on the conscription bill to stay in power to the end of this parliament’s term. For that compromise to have any legal validity it will have to involve language that does not invite intervention from the Supreme Court invalidating the law entirely. Neither of these events — and certainly not both — appear likely at this time.

What’s happened: An explosive interview by a former spokesperson for Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding the leaking of classified documents, dominated headlines in Israel and ignited reactions on all sides of the political divide.

• Eli Feldstein, a former spokesperson for Netanyahu and a suspect in two ongoing criminal investigations into national security breaches in the Prime Minister’s Office, spoke at length on the programme Yihye Tov on the public broadcaster Kan. The interview was split into three parts, with the first two broadcast over the last two nights and the third due to be broadcast tonight.
• The interview on Kan as well as an investigative report on the Hebrew i24 network sparked renewed interest in two overlapping scandals: the leaked classified documents and the Qatari influence campaign in the Prime Minister’s Office. Feldstein is connected to the ongoing investigation into both.
• In the parts already broadcast, Feldstein confirms that the leak of classified information to the German newspaper Bild in September 2024 was done to influence Israeli public opinion and reduce pressure on the Prime Minister on the hostage issue. In the second part of the interview, broadcast last night, Feldstein alleges that Netanyahu knew of the leak beforehand and approved of it afterward.
• He does not offer any specific proof of Netanyahu’s alleged knowledge of the leak beforehand, in contrast to the very specific details he does provide about Netanyahu’s alleged subsequent approval  as well as the Prime Minister’s alleged direct involvement in an effort to plant a question at a press conference after the leak which would allow Netanyahu to insinuate in his answer that the IDF had deliberately hiding the information in the leaked document from him.
• In the first part of the interview, broadcast two nights ago, Feldstein paints  a picture of Netanyahu focused on crafting a media strategy that would absolve him of “responsibility” for the October 7 massacre.
• The Prime Minister’s Office denounced Feldstein’s statements as “a long series of false and recycled allegations” from someone with personal motives trying to deflect responsibility from himself.

Context: The revelations of the last 48 hours concern two separate scandals, with overlapping involvement from three key figures close to the Prime Minister.

• The first scandal, which was the focus of most of the interview that was broadcast on the Kan public broadcaster, concerns the unauthorised handling of classified documents, allegedly in an attempt to influence domestic Israeli public opinion.
• The alleged actions occurred in the days immediately following the murder of six Israeli hostages in a Gaza tunnel. On August 31, 2024, IDF forces discovered the bodies of six hostages who had been executed by their captors one or two days before. The hostages had survived eleven months of captivity, abuse, and deliberate starvation since their abduction by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
• When the Hamas terrorists detected an Israeli forces operating nearby, they chose to murder the hostages to ensure that they would not be rescued, as had happened only a few days earlier with the Israeli Bedouin hostage Qaid Farhan al-Qadi. The discovery of the bodies sparked outrage in Israel leading to the largest demonstrations at any point in the two years of the war, with estimates of over 500,000 people assembled at various protest sites on September 1 as well as a general strike.
• It was in this context that the Prime Minister’s spokesperson Eli Feldstein leaked a classified intelligence assessment from months earlier that speculated that Hamas was using the hostage issue to manipulate the Israeli public and divide it.
• According to Feldstein, the documents were deliberately leaked to a non-Israeli media outlet not subject to Israeli censorship because no Israeli outlet would have been able to legally reveal classified information that had not been cleared for publication.
• The leak, and subsequent reporting about the leak, took the wind out of the sails of the protest movement, and the pressure on the Prime Minister to reach a hostage deal rapidly abated after the initial burst of anger over the murdered six hostages.
• Feldstein himself was not authorised to see the classified documents in question. He was also not directly employed by the Prime Minster’s Office, as he had not been granted the necessary security clearance. His salary was not paid for by the PMO, but rather through a complicated arrangement where money was transferred to him allegedly from an American lobbyist with connections to Qatar. In the interview, Feldstein claimed he did not know about the Qatari connection at the time.
• The second, overlapping, scandal concerns an alleged Qatari influence campaign in the Prime Minister’s Office, involving Feldstein himself and two other figures considered very close to Netanyahu, his aide Jonatan Urich and the lobbyist Yisrael (“Srulik”) Einhorn.
• Feldstein spoke very little about the Qatar affair in the first two parts of the interview. The third part will be broadcast tonight. 
• At the same time, an investigative report on the Hebrew i24 channel, normally seen as broadly sympathetic to Netanyahu, revealed a close coordination between Urich and Einhorn to release statements to the Israeli press, ostensibly reflecting the views of senior security officials, which tallied with Qatari priorities and very often disparaged Egyptian role in the hostage negotiations. Einhorn’s PR firm had earlier received payment from Qatar to promote the country’s image in the lead up to the 2022 World Cup.

Reactions: Most politicians and media figures aligned with the governing coalition denounced Feldstein and defended Netanyahu, with the exception of Minister Amichai Chikli (Likud) who said that there was “no way to defend what was revealed” and called for an investigation into the Qatar affair.

• Those opposed to Netanyahu were scathing in their criticism. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that “Netanyahu’s office betrayed the State of Israel and IDF soldiers during wartime and acted on behalf of Qatar for financial gain, and Netanyahu himself is covering it up…Whether Netanyahu knew or did not know that his office was working for the enemy in time of war, both possibilities require his immediate resignation.” In other media appearance, Bennett repeatedly used words like “treason” and “betrayal” to describe the alleged actions of the Prime Minister and some of his closest advisers.
• Gadi Eisenkot, chair of the new Yashar party, and briefly a minister in Netanyahu’s expanded war cabinet, said that “while the country was shaking with anger and pain over the murder of our six hostages in the tunnels, while the Israeli people went into the streets heartbroken—the prime minister wasn’t engaged in getting the rest of the hostages back, but rather in psychological warfare against his own citizens. He waged a psychological campaign that was designed to poison the public and to silence the families’ outcry.

Looking ahead: Israel is due to hold a general election by 27 October 2026. However, the election could be brought forward due to difficulties surrounding the budget and legislation on Haredi draft exemptions. There are also rumours circulating that Netanyahu will dismantle his government and will call an early election.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, Likud, is leading in the polls, but his governing coalition is projected to fall short of an overall majority.
• In parallel, Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to appear in court facing trial on corruption charges. At the end of November, he requested a pardon from President Isaac Herzog, which is currently under consideration.

What’s happened: On Friday the cabinet approved the state budget for the upcoming year.

• Prime Minister Netanyahu described it as a “responsible, balanced budget,” that “meets all the security needs of the State of Israel.”
• Beyond the military achievements over the last year, Netanyahu also highlighted the country’s economic strength, “Investments are flowing and will continue to flow. The stock market is breaking records. The shekel has strengthened. Interest rates have dropped and unemployment is at a low. And all this during a war. No one believed this either, but we believed, you believed, Minister of Finance, and we did it together.”
• “In the current budget, we intend to lower taxes, including income tax. We also intend to reduce regulation and streamline our governmental systems.” According to Netanyahu, the “most important thing in this budget is aid and grants for IDF soldiers in the standing army and in the reserves, and for their families, because they deserve it. We will grant them all the support they need, a framework we have already built, and it will grow even larger. Together, we are presenting a good budget for the State of Israel, and I am certain that this budget will pass.”
• The proposed budget amounts to 662 billion shekels (about £154 billion) and would leave the government with an operating deficit of 3.9 per cent of GDP.
• On Monday, Netanyahu was forced to attend a Knesset session triggered by 40 signatures from the opposition. Addressing the plenary, Netanyahu said that the government was also on the verge of completing the first stage a bill which would regulate draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox public.
• Leader of the Opposition Lapid blasted the Government for “approving a budget of corruption and draft-dodging.”
• Naftali Bennett, widely seen as a leading contender to replace Netanyahu as prime minister in the next election derided the budget as a “protection” racket of a Government“extorted by draft-dodgers, and bankrupting those who serve.”

Context: The process of cabinet approval of a government budget proposal was, in comparison to most years in Israel, unusually late and remarkably drama-free.

• Normally, the government finishes its proposal by July, and from there the budget moves to parliament. This year, Prime Minister Netanyahu preferred to hold off until after the fighting in Gaza (and elsewhere) ended before bringing a detailed proposal for the defence budget.
• There was a political calculation too. The unresolved dispute over the ultra-Orthodox draft exemption legislation threatened to topple the government over the past year and trigger early elections, and as long as that threat hovered over the horizon, there was little to be gained publicising potentially unpopular tax increases and spending cuts that might never have been implemented anyway.
• The draft dispute is also a principal reason why the budget resolution in cabinet was significantly less contentious than in previous years. The ultra-Orthodox representatives are currently not part of the cabinet as part of their pressure campaign on the draft issue, although they are not voting with the opposition.
• Crucially in order to pass the budget in parliament the government needs the ultra-Orthodox MKs in order to have a majority. They will only support the budget if they also receive the legislation over military exemption that they are pursuing.
• The biggest disagreement in the lead-up to Friday’s budget vote was regarding the defence budget. The initial gaps were enormous, with the Defence Ministry asking for 140 billion shekels (£33 billion) and the Treasury only granting 90 billion (around £21 billion). A revised downward estimate of reserve army service, a large drain on the defence budget since the October 7 war broke out, paved the way for a compromise on the figure of 112 billion shekels (£26 billion).
• Overall, this year’s budget has less dramatic  reforms than last year’s. Income tax brackets are once more inflation-linked – after having been frozen last year which lead to higher tax rates for middle class families.
• VAT exemptions on personal imports were raised, despite industry opposition to the measure. A dramatic reduction in dairy import tariffs was included in the budget proposal despite fierce opposition from local dairy farmers.
• On the other hand, the Treasury proposal to end the VAT exemption on tourism-related services, especially hotels, was successfully blocked following pressure from hoteliers. This policy has featured in many budget proposals over the years and never passed, though this year it survived to a very late stage before being abandoned.
• There are many sectors that face economic hardships due to the war, including reservists and those evacuated from their homes in the north and south. There is also an understanding that those who survived the attacks, as well as those wounded and bereaved, all require and deserve full rehabilitation.
• The Treasury was expected to propose shutting down at least five and possibly more Government ministries seen as superfluous. Expectations were that such a proposal would ultimately be whittled down or dropped entirely, but in the end the Treasury did not even include this measure as a proposal at all.
• The budget proposal also included what in Israel are indelicately referred to as “coalition funds,” last-minute earmarks for narrow sectoral interests. The total of these earmarks was 5.2 billion shekels, and they went almost entirely to religious institutions, with the majority of the money directed toward West Bank settlements.

Looking ahead: Historically, no Israeli government has ever successfully passed a budget in an election year.    

• The budget now moves to its first plenary reading in the Knesset and then to parliamentary committee discussions. By law, the Knesset has until March 31 to pass a budget. Failure to do so would automatically dissolve parliament and lead to elections within three months.
• Elections are currently scheduled for October 2026, so even in the event that a budget is not passed, this would only move the next election up by four months.

What’s happened: Prime Minister Netanyahu has submitted a formal request for a pardon to President Herzog.

• The full 111 page document was submitted to the Legal Department of the Office of the President by the Prime Minister’s lawyer, Amit Hadad.
• In parallel, Prime Minister Netanyahu released a video explaining the move. Addressing the citizens of Israel, Netanyahu argued that, “nearly a decade has passed since the investigations into my case  begun. My trial has been ongoing for nearly six years, and is expected to continue for many more years. As more exonerating testimony and evidence which have completely refuted the false allegations against me have come to light in court, and as it has become clearer that the evidentiary foundation against me was built amid the commission of serious crimes, my personal interest was and has remained to continue with this process until its end, until my full acquittal on all counts. But the security and political reality, the national interest, demand otherwise. The State of Israel faces tremendous challenges alongside tremendous opportunities. To repel the threats [and] to seize the opportunities, national unity is essential.”
• “The ongoing trial has torn us apart from within, has inspired fierce disagreements [and] has deepened divisions. I am sure, like many other Israelis, that the immediate end of the trial will greatly help lower the flames and will promote the broad reconciliation that our country so badly needs. I deliberated extensively on this issue, but recent events have tipped the scales. Due to a decision made by the judicial panel that presides over the case, I am obliged to testify three times a week. Three times a week. That is an impossible demand that isn’t made of any other Israeli citizen.
• “Furthermore, I also considered President Trump’s repeated requests to Israel’s president. President Trump called for an immediate end to the trial so that I might be able, alongside him, to advance with redoubled efforts the vital interests shared by Israel and the United States in a time window that is unlikely ever to reappear.
• “Dear citizens of Israel, time after time, I have been elected in democratic elections and I have received your confidence to continue to serve as the prime minister of Israel, first and foremost so as to achieve these historic goals. For these reasons, my attorneys submitted a request for a pardon today to the president. I expect everyone who has the country’s best interests at heart to support this step.”

Context: Upon receiving the request the President noted that he is aware that this is “an extraordinary request which carries with it significant implications,” adding, “after receiving all of the relevant opinions, the President will responsibly and sincerely consider the request.”

• Requesting a pardon before being sentenced and without admitting guilt is completely unprecedented in the Israeli system.
• The trial began in May 2020 and could run on for several more years. It is focused on three separate cases:
  • In “Case 1,000” Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust and is alleged to have received illegal gifts from businessman Arnon Milchan, worth up to £300,000, in return for allegedly acting in Milchan’s interest in a deal to sell an Israeli TV Channel (Channel 10) as well as allegedly helping him get a US visa, after Milchan’s was rescinded. Netanyahu is also alleged to have pursued a deal linked to Indian businessman Ratan Tata, who was Milchan’s business partner, and allegedly supported a law to extend tax breaks given to Israelis returning to live in the country after ten years (such as Milchan).
  • In “Case 2,000” Netanyahu is charged with fraud and breach of trust and is alleged to have worked on a deal with Yediot Ahronot owner Arnon “Noni” Mozes to get better media coverage by offering to restrict circulation of rival newspaper Israel Hayom, which was financed by US-based Netanyahu supporter Sheldon Adelson. The indictment said that Netanyahu and Mozes “recognised that the one had the ability to promote the other’s interest” in the run-up to the 2015 elections and discussed such possibilities. Netanyahu claims he was not serious about the agreement and never intended to implement the deal.
  • In “Case 4,000” Netanyahu is charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust and is alleged to have promoted regulatory decisions that benefited Shaul Elovitch, the controlling shareholder in the Bezeq telecom giant, in exchange for positive coverage from the Elovitch-owned Walla news site. The indictment says the relationship between Netanyahu and Elovitch was “based on give and take,” and the Prime Minister’s actions benefiting Elovitch netted the businessman benefits to the tune of some NIS 1.8 billion ($500 million) in the period 2012-2017. In exchange, Elovitch’s Walla news site “published your political messages that you wished to convey to the public.”
• The responses to the appeal for a pardon were predictably partisan. Leader of the Opposition Lapid said, “I say to President Herzog: You can’t grant Netanyahu a pardon without him admitting guilt, expressing remorse and immediately retiring from political life.”
• Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, “In order to rescue Israel from the chaos, I will support a binding arrangement that includes a respectful retirement from political life alongside an end of the trial. That way, we can let it go, unite, and rebuild the country together.”  
• Leader of the Democrats Yair Golan said, “Netanyahu wants a pardon? Admit guilt. Express remorse and resign. This is the only way for unity for the nation.”
• Leader of Yisrael Beiteinu Avigdor Lieberman said, “Five minutes ago there was a war here, and the draft-dodging bill and two hostages who aren’t back and the economy is collapsing, and food prices are sky-high. And what about the whitewash commission of inquiry they’re setting up? Everything has fallen apart. We mustn’t allow him to control the public conversation. We have to keep our eye on the ball.”
• Coalition Chairman MK Ofir Katz (Likud) said, “The prime minister’s decision to request a pardon is an act of great magnanimity. It’s clear to everyone that the most political trial is collapsing, and the prime minister could easily have proven his innocence in this corrupt witch hunt. But for the sake of healing the country and reconciliation, he is choosing this path. A true leader who always puts the good of the country before his personal interests.” He also received support from his coalition partners.
• There is speculation that President Herzog could present several conditions in order to receive a pardon: To step down as prime minister, possibly with the option of being re-elected in new elections; and to call an end to all the legislation around judicial reform.
• Veteran commentator Nahum Barnea writing in Yediot Ahronot lays out three possible responses by the President:
  • “The first is to say that a pardon is out of the question since the conditions stipulated by law haven’t been met.”
  • “The second is to give Netanyahu everything he has demanded and to pray that the High Court of Justice doesn’t strike down the pardon.”
  • “The third is to insist on Netanyahu’s retirement in return for a pardon; to insist that the defendant acknowledge his guilt.”
• In the past there were discussions of a plea bargain that would see charges of bribery being dropped, an admission of guilt on the lesser charges, evading prison, but retiring from politics.    
• The issue has long divided Israeli society. In the latest polling on Kan News, 38 per cent support a pardon, with 43 per cent opposed.

Looking ahead: The request has now been relayed to the Pardons Department in the Ministry of Justice which will gather the opinions of all the relevant authorities in the Ministry of Justice.

• The next stage will include a review by the Legal Advisor in the Office of the President and her team to formulate an additional opinion for the President.
• The President released a guide to explain for the full legal process ahead.
• Prime Minister Netanyahu’s trial resumed this morning. None of the parties made any mention of his request for clemency from President Herzog. Netanyahu filed a motion asking the court to cancel his court appearance tomorrow, citing state needs. The judges have not yet ruled on his motion.

What’s happened: Three parallel dramas are unfolding in Israeli domestic politics, and all three function indirectly as holdovers of the bitter divisions that predate the October 7 massacre and subsequent war.

• Reports suggest Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided to advance controversial legislation formalising draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox minority in Israel in the coming weeks. The logic being that this is the only way to prevent early elections (an option he was reportedly considering in recent weeks) from being called now, as well as the only way to hold onto his ultra-Orthodox partners after the next election.
• Netanyahu could face opposition  within his own ruling Likud party, with suggestions that as many as five coalition MK’s oppose the bill being drafted by Netanyahu’s ally Boaz Bismuth, the MK who replaced Yuli Edelstein as chair of the Knesset’s Foreign and Defence Committee.
• The issue of ultra-Orthodox induction into the army has been a long term challenge. For the prime minister it pits his commitment to his ultra-Orthodox allies to protect and perpetuate the religious studies of ultra-Orthodox men against the popular sentiment striving for a more equal sharing of the burden. The issue has been further exacerbated following the oversized sacrifices made by reservists over the last two years.
• There is continued and unusual public tension between the IDF Chief OF Staff Zamir and Defence Minister Katz along with other senior government ministers.
• Comments made yesterday by Zamir were widely interpreted as criticism of the Government. Speaking at the annual ceremony held in honour of Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion (which, unusually, was not attended by the Prime Minister), Zamir said that “what is needed is courageous, purposeful, transformative leadership. Leadership that both recognises failure and dares to drive change. Not leadership that frightens and stifles, but leadership that uplifts — leadership with inspiration. Not leadership that evades, but one that looks truth in the eye and sets a new direction.”
• Meanwhile this morning the Supreme Court ruled against Justice Minister Levin in his effort to handpick a retired judge of his liking to lead the investigation into malfeasance by the IDF Advocate General. The Court ruled that his choice did not meet the requirements stipulated for the investigation.
• The entire affair, involving abuse of Hamas affiliated prisoners by IDF reservists, a leak of an incriminating video, the MAG lying to the Supreme Court about the source of the leak. The scandal pits coalition  politicians against the legal establishment along similar lines over the controversial judicial reform that was prevalent in the months before October 7, and has been the source of impassioned public disagreement in Israel.