On Jan. 17, 2017, Police Commissioner Roni Alsheikh commented publicly for the first time on the investigations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which had been making headlines. “The investigation won’t be very long,” he said. His almost offhanded remark was made while touring the southern Bedouin town of Rahat, as though in spontaneous response to reporters’ questions rather than at an official briefing for reporters on the dramatic investigations of an incumbent prime minister.

Alsheikh's predicted timeframe turned out to be wrong. The investigation of suspicions that Netanyahu accepted gifts from wealthy business people — a probe dubbed Case 1,000 — and colluded with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes to obtain positive coverage (Case 2,000) is still ongoing, and the end is nowhere in sight. It’s still unclear when the police will wrap up its work and hand its recommendations to the state prosecutor.

On Dec. 28, Channel 2 News reported on an additional delay of at least six weeks in formulating recommendations on whether to indict Netanyahu in the two cases. The news that additional work was needed to complete the probes contradicted previous reports, based on police sources, saying the investigation would be over in January 2018. The Channel 2 exclusive by its senior journalist, Amnon Abramovitch, sent the political system into a tailspin. The police neither confirmed nor denied.

Since Alsheikh saw fit to publicly provide a time limit on Netanyahu’s investigations, he should also have issued a public update through an official spokesperson on the status of the investigations that have been shaking up the country and its politicians for over a year. So far, the public has been exposed to a plethora of headlines about the investigations, some of them correct and others manipulative, almost all of them stemming from anonymous leaks.