Netanyahu's pardon request: How the process works

Benjamin Netanyahu submitted a 111-page request today, through his lawyer Adv. Amit Hadad, for a pardon from President Isaac Herzog. Since 2020, Netanyahu has been on trial on charges of receiving bribes, breach of trust, and fraud, in three cases, in the Jerusalem District Court.

The concept of a pardon is mentioned in only one place in the Israeli statute book, and that is in section 11(b) of the Basic Law: The President of the State. The section reads: “The President of the State has the power to pardon offenders and modify sentences by reducing or commuting them.” In other words, the final decision on whether to grant Netanyahu a pardon lies with President Herzog.

Nevertheless, the request for a pardon is only the beginning of a process. The request will go to the pardons department of the Ministry of Justice, where material will be gathered for examining Netanyahu’s request in order to formulate an opinion. Only after that will the request be forwarded for the president’s final decision. In most cases, the president accepts the opinion of the Ministry of Justice, but he Is not obliged to do so.

Why was Netanyahu’s request necessary?

According to the Ministry of Justice website, “The request for a pardon may be submitted by the applicant in question, his attorney, of a first degree relative.” This led to President Herzog’s response to US President Trump’s letter calling for a pardon for Netanyahu that the prime minister had to submit a request on his own behalf. Now that the request has been submitted by the book, the process of considering it can begin.

Is an admission of guilt required in order to receive a pardon?

No. As explained in an article by Dr. Dana Blander, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, “A pardon is an act of mercy and justice made out of consideration of the individual and taking into account the unique personal circumstances of each applicant for a pardon. There are therefore no preconditions for a pardon, and the law does not determine what the considerations of the president should be when he comes to judge requests for a pardon.” Accordingly, admission of guilt Is not a requirement.

In fact, section 3 of Netanyahu’s request for a pardon says as much: “The prime minister believed from the beginning, and he still believes, that if the legal proceeding is conducted to the end, it will conclude with a complete acquittal.”

Does Netanyahu have to be convicted in order to award him a pardon?

In principle, section 11(b) refers to “offenders”, that is to say, people who have been convicted under the law. There is, however, a precedent for awarding a pardon before conviction. In the Bus 300 affair in the 1980s, President Haim Herzog (the current president’s father) pardoned the Shin Bet operatives involved in the affair after they admitted guilt and after the head of the Shin Bet resigned. The operatives were accused of killing Palestinian terrorists after they had been taken prisoner.

Netanyahu asks for pardon

“I did this with the aim of putting an end to the furor over the affair and to avoid further severe harm to the Shin Bet. My decision was made out of the deep recognition that the good of the public and of the state make it obligatory to protect our security and to save the Shin Bet from the damage involved in a continuation of the affair,” President Herzog senior stated at the time by way of justification.

The matter came before the High Court of Justice, which ruled that in rare cases a pardon could be awarded before conviction, but only where there were “completely extraordinary circumstances in which a supreme public interest arises or extreme personal circumstances, and where no other reasonable solution can be seen.” Accordingly, the Attorney General’s guideline 4.4000 states, “In general, the president of the state will only deal with requests relating to a person who has been convicted. Only in rare cases will a request be considered before conviction.”

In line with the late President Haim Herzog’s explanation, Netanyahu’s request is based on the public interest. “The prime minister is prepared to take this path of requesting a pardon from his honor, even though he thus relinquishes his right to conduct the legal proceedings in his affairs to their conclusion, and this, as mentioned, out of a view of the public interest in its entirety. The good of the people and the state always was and always will be uppermost in the prime minister’s mind, and so it is now.”

However, as Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, an expert on criminal law at the Hebrew University and the Israel Democracy Institute has pointed out to us before, given the possibility of a plea bargain, it is hard to argue that there is “no other reasonable solution” as the High Court of Justice put it.

Is there judicial review of the award of a pardon?

Section 13 (a) of the Basic Law: The President of the State stipulates: “The President of the State shall not be accountable to any court of law or tribunal for anything connected with his functions or powers, and shall be immune from any legal action on this account.”

Nevertheless, legal precedent has determined that there can be narrower judicial review in exceptional cases even of actions of the president or of others involved in the decision.

Another check on the actions of the president is the confirmation signature which in the case of pardons is usually given by the minister of justice. In most cases, the minister provides the confirmation signature, and considering the current political situation it can be presumed that that will happen in this case, but in exceptional circumstances he can withhold it. One way of appealing to the High Court of Justice, should President Herzog grant Netanyahu’s request, would be a petition against a confirmation signature by Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, although it is by means certain that it would be upheld.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been convicted of a crime, and is entitled to the presumption of innocence

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on November 30, 2025.

Source link