By Maayan Lubell
TEL AVIV (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered a Tel Aviv courthouse on Tuesday to take the stand for the first time in a long-running corruption trial that will likely force him to juggle between the courtroom and war room for weeks.
Netanyahu arrived around 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) while a few dozen protesters gathered outside, some of them supporters and others demanding he do more to negotiate the release of some 100 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has been waging war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group for more than a year, during which Netanyahu had been granted a delay for the start of his court appearances. But last Thursday, judges ruled that he must start testifying.
Charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust, Netanyahu will testify three times a week, the court said, despite the Gaza war and possible new threats posed by wider turmoil in the Middle East, including in neighbouring Syria.
Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 in three cases involving gifts from millionaire friends and for allegedly seeking regulatory favours for media tycoons in return for favourable coverage. He denies any wrongdoing.
In the run-up to his court date, Netanyahu revived familiar pre-war rhetoric against law enforcement, describing investigations against him as a witch hunt. He denies the charges and has pleaded not guilty.
"The real threat to democracy in Israel is not posed by the public's elected representatives, but by some among the law enforcement authorities who refuse to accept the voters' choice and are trying to carry out a coup with rabid political investigations that are unacceptable in any democracy," he said in a statement on Thursday.
At a Monday night press conference Netanyahu said he had waited eight years to be able to tell his story and expressed outrage at the way witnesses had been treated during investigations.
Before the war, Netanyahu's legal troubles bitterly divided Israelis and shook Israeli politics through five rounds of elections. His government's bid last year to curb the powers of the judiciary further polarised Israelis.
The shock Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Gaza war swept Netanyahu's trial off the public agenda as Israelis came together in grief and trauma. But as the war dragged on, political unity crumbled.
In recent weeks, while fighting abated on one front after Israel reached a ceasefire with Hamas' Lebanese ally Hezbollah, members of Netanyahu's cabinet, including his justice and police ministers, have clashed with the judiciary.
In power almost consecutively since 2009, Netanyahu, 75, is Israel's longest serving leader and its first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime.
His domestic legal woes were compounded last month when the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for him and his former defence chief Yoav Gallant along with a Hamas leader, for alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; Additional reporting by Emily Rose; Editing by Howard Goller)
