Israeli police have arrested a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over allegedly leaking classified information to foreign media. <\/p>\n
Opposition leaders say the intelligence was \u201cfaked,\u201d and part of a ruse to thwart a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza. <\/p>\n
The investigation centers on allegations that the prime minister\u2019s office promoted to foreign media the claim that Hamas was planning on smuggling hostages out of Gaza over the Egyptian border and creating divisions in Israeli society to pressure Netanyahu into a hostage release and ceasefire deal. <\/p>\n
Eliezer Feldstein, who has been named by opposition politicians as an aide to Netanyahu, is among several people being interrogated over the leak of \u201cclassified and sensitive intelligence information,\u201d according to court documents. A court order made public on Sunday said that information taken from the Israeli military\u2019s systems and \u201cillegally issued\u201d may have damaged Israel\u2019s ability to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Netanyahu denied that there have been leaks from the Prime Minister\u2019s Office (PMO), and that the \u201cperson in question never participated in security-related discussions,\u201d apparently referring to Feldstein. <\/p>\n
The PMO also downplayed the possibility that the leak impacted negotiations with Hamas over the release of hostages from Gaza, calling the claim \u201cridiculous.\u201d <\/p>\n
Opposition leader Yair Lapid on Sunday accused the prime minister\u2019s office of leaking \u201cfaked secret documents to torpedo the possibility of a hostage deal \u2013 to shape a public opinion influence operation against the hostages\u2019 families.\u201d <\/p>\n
Families of hostages held in Gaza have accused Netanyahu of repeatedly thwarting an agreement with Hamas, believing that an end to the Gaza war would force the prime minister to hold elections. Netanyahu is alleged to have, in the past, torpedoed agreements with 11th hour demands \u2013 something he denies. <\/p>\n
The alleged leaks were the basis of two articles published in September, one in the Jewish Chronicle, in the United Kingdom, and another in Germany\u2019s Bild, both citing Israeli intelligence sources and supporting a narrative being pushed by Netanyahu at the time. <\/p>\n
The articles were published as ceasefire and hostage release negotiations were ongoing, but also as thousands of Israelis demonstrated almost daily calling on the government to strike a deal with Hamas and bring Israeli hostages home. <\/p>\n
Those demonstrations intensified after the Israeli military announced on September 1 that six Israelis were killed in Gaza \u2013 four of them were due to be released in a first wave of the potential deal. <\/p>\n
The next day, Netanyahu held a news conference and presented an alleged Hamas document he said was found in a tunnel in Gaza. The document, he said, showed that Hamas was trying to divide Israelis. \u201cI am not going to surrender to this pressure,\u201d Netanyahu said, and reiterated his demand that Israel control the Gaza-Egypt border, also known as the Philadelphi corridor. Doing so would \u201cprevent the smuggling of our hostages to Sinai,\u201d he said. \u201cThey can pop up in Iran or Yemen.\u201d <\/p>\n
Just days later, Jewish Chronicle published an article claiming that intelligence sources said \u201cSinwar\u2019s plan was to smuggle himself and the remaining Hamas leaders along with Israeli hostages through the Philadelphi corridor to Sinai and from there to Iran.\u201d <\/p>\n
The article said that the information was gleaned \u201cduring the interrogation of a captured senior Hamas official, as well as by information obtained from documents seized on Thursday, August 29, the day the six bodies of the murdered hostages were retrieved.\u201d It has since been deleted, but an archived version is still available. <\/p>\n
The prime minister\u2019s son, Yair Netanyahu, promoted the article on his social media. <\/p>\n
During a news conference on September 10, the Israeli military\u2019s spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, told a reporter: \u201cI don\u2019t know the kind of information you mentioned regarding Sinwar and the hostages in Philadelphi.\u201d <\/p>\n
During that same period, an article in the German newspaper Bild said a Hamas document it alluded was written by Yahya Sinwar allegedly showed how the group was drawing out the war and was trying to create divisions within Israel and build pressure on the families of the hostages\u2019 families so they in turn could pressure the government. Bild cited an intelligence document and echoed the claims Netanyahu had made in his September 2 news conference. <\/p>\n
In a statement on September 8, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the document cited by Bild was not written by Sinwar and that it was an old document found five months ago and \u201cwritten as a recommendation by middle ranks in Hamas and not by Sinwar.\u201d <\/p>\n
The information did not \u201cconstitute new information,\u201d the IDF said, adding that it was \u201cpresented to the decision makers several times, even before the document in question was located.\u201d The statement added it is investigating the leak of the document, which \u201cconstitutes a serious offence.\u201d <\/p>\n
Following the court\u2019s lifting of a gag order on Sunday, families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza pointed their fingers at the prime minister\u2019s office, saying \u201csuspicions indicate that people associated with the prime minister acted to carry out one of the biggest deceptions in the history of the country.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz \u2013 who quit Netanyahu\u2019s wartime cabinet earlier this year \u2013 have seized on the alleged leaks as a failure at the very top of government, with Gantz calling it a \u201cnational crime.\u201d <\/p>\n
Both have blamed Netanyahu\u2019s office for the leak, with Gantz accusing Netanyahu of leveraging the leaks for political gains. Lapid also questioned whether the leak might have been intentional as hostage negotiations with Hamas foundered earlier in the year, according to a joint statement by the two opposition leaders on Sunday. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is suspected that Netanyahu\u2019s team published secret documents and faked secret documents to torpedo the possibility of a hostage deal,\u201d Lapid said in a statement. \u201cThis affair came out of the Prime Minister\u2019s own office, and the investigation must examine if it wasn\u2019t at the Prime Minister\u2019s orders.\u201d <\/p>\n
Dana Karni and Mike Schwartz contributed to this report. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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