It's now official: Fifteen days after elections, one day after the 23rd Knesset will be sworn in, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will appear for a court hearing at the start of the corruption trial against him. This will happen on March 17 in the Jerusalem District Court. Even if he loses the March 2 elections to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, Netanyahu will still be serving as prime minister on the first day of his trial — no new government will be composed in the laps of these two weeks. And so, the date will become historical. It will be the first time in the history of the State of Israel that a serving prime minister will be put on trial for indictments filed against him on bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

The event is expected to be especially bizarre because the Jerusalem District Court is situated in East Jerusalem, an area densely populated by Palestinians. Even the name of the street on which the court is situated has symbolic meaning: Salah al-Din, the Muslim leader who defeated the Crusaders in the 1187 battle of Hattin (the Battle of the Horns of Hattin). The prime minister of Israel — one of the most guarded and secured persons in the world — will be forced to appear in a courthouse planted in the very heart of Palestinian East Jerusalem. A reinforced division of guards will be needed to secure him, even before we’ve counted the local and Israeli media that will impose a siege on the event. In light of these factors, chances are high that the court's administration will decide to move the site of the trial to another, less explosive site where the historic event can be conducted under more reasonable conditions.

The decision regarding the opening date of the trial was made Feb. 18 by the presidency of the Jerusalem District Court, and the news took over Israel’s media agenda all at once. Netanyahu was not caught unprepared. Immediately after the broadcasting of the decision, the prime minister invited his rival Benny Gantz to a public debate. This was an attempt on Netanyahu’s part to recapture the agenda and turn public interest away from his trial, but Gantz did not fall into the trap. “You got spooked … so you’re pushing this spin?’’ he tweeted. “Netanyahu awaits a confrontation with the prosecutor in his trial. He’s not relevant anymore. He can’t lead the country. We won’t let him cover up this fact through a fake invitation to a debate,” a senior Blue and White member told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

Israeli law allows a prime minister to continue to serve as such even if they are served with an indictment. A prime minister is forced to resign only after the conclusive court ruling. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine a situation in which a prime minister shows up each morning at the district court surrounded by dozens of security guards, spends time there until the afternoon hours while simultaneously managing the most complex state on the planet Earth in a role that is viewed as sensitive, explosive and difficult. Netanyahu, on the other hand, claims he will do so easily: “I work 16-17 hours out of every 24-hour day,” Netanyahu said this week in an interview with Army Radio Feb. 18. “So I’ll work 15 hours instead.”