The ruling coalition announced Monday it will introduce a controversial bill to eliminate the criminal offense of “fraud and breach of trust,” a move with major implications for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently on trial and charged with that offense in all his ongoing corruption cases.
The proposed legislation, spearheaded by coalition whip Ofir Katz of the ruling Likud Party, Knesset Constitution Committee chair Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionist Party and MK Mishel Buskila of New Hope, a close ally of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, is expected to go before the Ministerial Committee for Legislation as early as next week.
In their statement, the bill’s sponsors described the offense as a vague legal tool that has long enabled prosecutors to target elected officials for behavior that is ethically questionable but not clearly criminal. They called for a “rapid legislative process,” framing the move as an overdue correction to what they labeled an overreach by law enforcement.
Critics say the bill appears tailor-made to benefit Netanyahu, who is accused of exploiting his public position for personal gain. If passed, the bill could significantly weaken the legal framework used to prosecute public corruption in Israel.
The lawmakers said that “fraud and breach of trust” — enshrined in Article 284 of the Penal Code since 1977 — is a catch-all provision lacking clear legal standards and prone to abuse. “It allows prosecutors to decide retroactively what constitutes a crime, enabling selective and biased enforcement,” the coalition members said, adding that many cases opened under this statute eventually collapsed despite sweeping investigative powers including phone taps and intrusive searches.
They noted that Israel already has well-defined laws to address public corruption, including bribery, money laundering, insider trading, fraud, forgery and obstruction of justice. The proposed bill, they said, would replace the current provision with clearer offenses, such as first-degree conflict of interest and trading in government information, while strengthening disciplinary measures and ethics oversight.
Efforts to amend or repeal the clause have surfaced repeatedly over the past two decades. While many legal experts from across the political spectrum have criticized the law’s ambiguity, previous justice ministries failed to advance reforms due to ongoing investigations or trials involving senior politicians, including prime ministers.
Even a landmark Supreme Court ruling in the case of Shimon Sheves, former director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office under Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, failed to clarify the boundaries of the offense.
Former attorneys general Meni Mazuz and Yehuda Weinstein previously proposed reforms that would require prosecutors to prove “substantial harm” to one of three core values — public integrity, public trust or the proper functioning of public service — before bringing such charges. But those proposals were never implemented.