Israel's Channel 14 reported on Wednesday that President Isaac Herzog is pushing a deal that would keep Benjamin Netanyahu in power for two more years and then wipe out his corruption trial: Netanyahu would lead the next government, hand the premiership to Gadi Eisenkot halfway through the term, retire from politics and receive a full pardon. Herzog's office called the report "a complete lie" and said "it never happened", Middle East Monitor reported.

Channel 14 is the station closest to Netanyahu, and it said Herzog had been promoting the arrangement for two years, since before the campaign, and that it could work if the vote count stays as it is. Netanyahu's bloc on 53 seats, Eisenkot's on 48 and the Arab lists on 19, with 61 needed.

It said Netanyahu would insist on the first two years so he could keep working with Donald Trump. Herzog's office said official results reach the president next Wednesday and that he does not "engage in speculation regarding the process of assigning the task of forming a government".

Netanyahu asked Herzog for a pardon in November 2025 without admitting guilt in any of the three bribery, fraud and breach of trust cases he has been on trial for since 2020, and Trump has demanded it publicly. In April Herzog declined to decide and sent Netanyahu's lawyer and the attorney general back to plea deal talks, saying the "legal landscape leaves room for creativity". Netanyahu told him an end to the trial would "lower the flames and promote broad reconciliation".

Eisenkot has said he will not serve under Netanyahu, and neither his camp nor Likud has answered the report. Whoever put it on air, the shape of it is the one Netanyahu has wanted since he was indicted: two more years in office, under an International Criminal Court warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, and a clean record at the end of them. This news is developing, more updates will follow.