The battle for Bibi's political life: Hours before strikes on Iran, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu was in court fighting charges of bribery and fraud. So can the ultimate survivor defeat his enemies on the battlefield and in the courtroom?

Daily Mail​

12 hours ago

Israel 's embattled prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cut a confident and determined figure as he faced the foreign media in a rare live press conference held in his Jerusalem office late afternoon on Sunday.
He began against a backdrop of a screen that read, 'Open your eyes to Hamas lies'. It was vintage 'Bibi': when your back's against the wall, come out with all guns blazing.
Thousands of his fellow citizens may have been protesting in the streets against his plan to take over Gaza City but Netanyahu was going ahead regardless. This uncompromising approach has marked his attitude to the war from day one and is all the more remarkable given that he has simultaneously been fighting on a second, and far more personal, front.
Israel's wartime leader has spent many key hours of the last few months in the austere surroundings of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv District Court rooms, where he is on trial for bribery, fraud and 'breach of trust'.
In the days before he gave the order to strike Iran 's nuclear facilities in June, Netanyahu was not to be found hunkered down with close advisers at his official residence in Jerusalem.
He had not cleared his schedule for final meetings with the top brass, going over every detail ahead of the most high-stakes military operation of his long and colourful tenure.
Instead, he spent many of those critical final hours sitting in a courtroom.
'He came to court but he couldn't talk,' says a source close to Netanyahu, who described the PM as uncharacteristically tongue-tied during the proceedings on June 11, after the Israeli PM had refused to vary his schedule in case Tehran took it as a signal that an attack was imminent.
'He hadn't slept, but he had to play everything normal,' the source adds.
'It was surreal,' another senior Israeli official tells the Daily Mail. 'I mean, there was even something about a Bugs Bunny doll bought for his son 30 years ago or something equally absurd.' (The stuffed toy, gifted by a billionaire political supporter, nearly 30 years ago, was cited as evidence of Netanyahu's alleged greed.)
Today, we can reveal in detail the inside story of how Netanyahu has been fighting in court for his political life while waging his high-stakes war in the region.
We can report how top military officers were secretly brought into court to plead with the judge to reduce the number of weekly hearings in his case so he would have more time to plan the Iran operation as early as February this year.
Most months there have been closed-door arguments over his availability as judges determine whether the case should be adjourned to help the war effort, or if his lawyers were just playing for time. Netanyahu's legal team have been attending as many as three hearings every week – often with the PM himself required to appear.
So it was in the run-up to the strike on Iran. After the session described above had concluded, Netanyahu went home to clear his head.
Just 24 hours later, he gave the order to launch Operation Rising Lion against the ayatollahs.
It was the start of what Donald Trump later christened the 'Twelve-Day War' — a unilateral strike that, exactly as Netanyahu had gambled, culminated with the US President dispatching American B2 planes to drop more than a dozen bunker-buster bombs on Iran's nuclear sites built deep underground in mountainous regions.
This followed Hamas being pulverised in Gaza at immense cost to the civilian population; the decapitation of Hezbollah in a flamboyant 'exploding pagers' operation in Lebanon; and the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Now, in Tehran, the 'head of the snake' had been hit.
And with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his allies at their weakest, many believed a once-in-a-generation opportunity presented itself to reset the balance of power and bring about regional peace and security.
Netanyahu stood on the cusp of striking a deal to end the war in Gaza. In doing so, he could engineer the return of the remaining hostages and perhaps even normalise relations with Saudi Arabia and the wider Arab world.
It was a truly remarkable change of fortune for Israel's longest serving Prime Minister who had been caught unawares when his country suffered its greatest tragedy in the shape of October 7. As for the court case, at the height of his victory over Iran, Netanyahu's lawyers were reportedly negotiating a plea deal that could have seen his case disappear – but Israeli Press said it fell apart over the PM's refusal to step down as a condition.
Why didn't he take the offer? Any sane man would surely accept a plea deal to ensure that his remarkable political career did not end in disgrace.
Yet the only thing everyone we spoke to agrees on is that Benjamin Netanyahu is not going anywhere. 'It is not in his DNA,' says long-standing political opponent and former deputy director of Mossad, Ram Ben-Barak.
A close ally of the prime minister concurs. 'He will never resign – not as a condition of these bogus allegations,' they told us.
But, if he won't resign, then what on earth is his plan? 'He will run [for prime minister] again, of course,' they added.
Today, just weeks after turning down the plea deal, Netanyahu is once more under unbearable pressure with anti-war protests gathering steam and Israelis hysterical over appalling images of hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski being starved in the terror tunnels of Gaza.
Jerusalem and Washington have both pulled out of ceasefire talks, blaming Hamas's intransigence on key issues – with the terror group emboldened to refuse to disarm after calls from Britain, France and Canada to recognise a Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, widely circulated images of starvation in Gaza – some now denounced by Netanyahu as fakes – have shocked the world and Netanyahu's declaration that Israel will take over Gaza City has heaped yet more criticism on the war that has killed over 60,000 according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
For years now, Israel's fate has become increasingly intertwined with that of Netanyahu, 75.
He became the first prime minister to be born in the Jewish State back in 1996 and he has served three terms, though not all of them continuously.
It was in 2019, while still in office, that Netanyahu was charged with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases.
He is said to have accepted luxury gifts of cigars and champagne and to have struck 'backroom deals' with a newspaper baron and a telecoms boss.
Netanyahu and his supporters insisted he was the victim of a 'witch hunt' and tied his political survival to that of the nation's battle against internal enemies.
He was ousted in 2021 but cobbled together a hardline Right-wing coalition and returned in December 2022 – before announcing plans to overhaul the judiciary five days after reassuming power.
It sparked mass protests over allegations he was attempting to influence his own trials and – amid the chaos – Hamas launched its barbaric terror attack, killing 1,200 and taking 251 hostages.
There could be no doubt that both Netanyahu and his country were fighting for their survival.
Netanyahu's allies believe that events since October 7 are a vindication of their leader's patriotism and far-sightedness. He has not only taken out Israel's enemies one by one but cleared the way for that strike on Iran.
But his opponents, while supporting the attack on Tehran, are circumspect.
'He is taking a lot of credit for winning in Iran, which is much more down to our brilliant military and intelligence,' says former deputy director of Mossad, Ben-Barak.
'I say, if you take the credit for winning in Iran, you must also take the responsibility for the failure of October 7.'
There has still been no inquiry for the failings that day – Netanyahu insists this must come after the war in Gaza ends.
Naturally, opponents see a shrewd opportunist determined to fight a 'forever war' in a bid to keep his day of reckoning at bay.
As Britain becomes the latest to push for Palestine to be recognised when the UN General Assembly opens in September, critics see Netanyahu putting his personal survival above what is best for his country. Dr Nachman Shai, former Minister of Diaspora Affairs of the Israeli Labor party, said: 'Netanyahu and this government have made Israel much weaker internationally.
'After October 7 Israel had all the legitimacy to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages, but nearly two years later a Palestinian state is being recognised. How did we get here? It's unimaginable.'
On the other hand, his supporters argue it is precisely Netanyahu's ability to ignore criticism and stay focused on his goals that make him the only leader capable of leading Israel in its hour of need.
'One of his supporters told me they went to Africa and met an elephant with Bibi's skin,' an ally jokes. 'You cannot live with these attacks unless you thicken your skin. That is what created him, that's what gave him the opportunity and ability to win after October 7.'
Not only was he facing calls to resign but, within weeks of October 7, his trial resumed.
The PM's legal team is headed by 39-year-old attorney Amit Hadad. Members of Netanyahu's inner circle quip that the leader spends more time with Hadad than with his own family.
The PM's adviser, Topaz Luk, said the 'profound closeness' between the two men 'goes beyond legal representation' and everyone in the inner circle credits this relationship for much of Netanyahu's success.
They describe as 'absurd' the decision to resume legal proceedings against him for three days a week in the wake of the October 7 attacks, given the grave military challenges facing the country.
'It was so surreal to me to see everything continue as if the world was not being torn apart,' one says.
But Netanyahu has not struggled with the rigours of the process, they argue.
'If he was interrogated from 8am to 12pm, at 12.30pm he would meet the US Secretary of State,' they add. 'He doesn't care, it's as if it's someone else's trial. That's how he works. He is only focused on the relevant target.'
That is not to say the court case hasn't been distracting. Just two days after Bashar al-Assad's Syrian dictatorship fell to hardline Islamist rebels on December 8 last year, for example, Netanyahu was in court embarking on his primary statement as a witness.
His pleas to postpone the case by two weeks on account of Assad's fall went unheard and he was not granted a single day's leave. Three months after that, the Daily Mail has learnt, Netanyahu made a top secret request to reduce the number of days the court would sit in order to give him more time to plan the Iranian operation.
The head of military intelligence and the military secretary all went to court to attend a closed-door hearing which got under way only after everyone present had signed a 'vicious protocol' which made it clear what would happen should they 'expose this state secret'.
It is claimed the head of Israeli intelligence argued in line with the defence that this was essential.
The judge did adjourn hearings for two days, and the case continued at a reduced rate of two a week.
Netanyahu's inner circle adamantly believe the legal obduracy shows the case is designed to tie up the prime minister.
Boaz Bismuth, a close ally of Netanyahu, says: 'In these challenging times, we need a prime minister at the wheel and not in court.'
Following the success of the Iran strikes, however, Bibi appeared to get his mojo back. 'Those 12 days, they brought the colour back to his cheeks,' an ally says of the attack.
It is this confidence that leads everyone who knows the prime minister to believe he will run again, before his term runs out in October next year.
But as Israel's fate and that of its leader become ever more tightly intertwined, there is a growing fear that the historic opportunity that presents itself right now for regional peace will slip away.
Some 50 hostages remain held by Hamas, of whom 20 are believed to be alive, but the growing international condemnation of Israel's approach to Gaza and the increasing calls for recognition of a Palestinian state have emboldened Hamas to harden its stance in negotiations.
Meanwhile, Israeli families are tired of burying their dead in a war they thought would be over in months, not years.
For Israel's leading commentator, Amit Segal, who has seen his fair share of Israeli leaders come and go, Netanyahu's rule is following a familiar pattern.
'At a certain point, they start believing that being a patriot means that they must serve as prime minister, because otherwise the country will collapse,' he says.
'Netanyahu is no exception.'