A new scandal, involving an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is shaking the Israeli political scene. The case concerns secret defense documents related to the war in Gaza published in early September by two foreign media outlets, the British weekly Jewish chronicle and the German newspaper image. According to Israeli justice, the leak of these classified documents, coming from the Israeli army, could have caused “serious damage to state security” and hinder efforts to free hostages held in the Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli press goes further: it suggests that the documents transmitted to the two newspapers, which were largely manipulated, are part of an opaque influence campaign, orchestrated by Netanyahu, to torpedo any possibility of an agreement with Hamas. The Israeli Prime Minister is regularly accused of deliberately prolonging the war in Gaza, fearing that a cessation of hostilities would open the way to an investigation into the October 7 security fiasco, which could prove fatal for him.
Five people have already been arrested as part of the investigation into the leaks, launched in September by the Shin Bet (national intelligence), the police and the army. The only suspect whose identity has been revealed in court at this point on Sunday is Captain Eli Feldstein, who worked as a spokesperson in the Prime Minister’s Office for Israeli Defense Journalists.
This role, however, was not clearly established at the administrative level, as the officer was apparently not on the personnel list and, according to our information, would have continued to receive his army reservist salary. An aggravating circumstance is that Eli Feldstein had not been accredited by the Shin Bet to access secret defense information, although he participated on several occasions, together with Benyamin Netanyahu, in visits to sites that required this accreditation.
The matter began as soon as the “leaks” were published. On September 5, the Jewish chroniclethe oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper on the planet, published what it presented as a “scoop,” based on “intelligence sources” Israeli. He claimed that Yahya Sinouar, the Hamas leader and mastermind of October 7 – who was assassinated on October 16 by the Israeli army – planned to escape from Gaza, taking Israeli hostages, through the tunnels dug under the Philadelphia Corridor, the corridor that separates them. Sinai Egyptian coastal territory. According to the British weekly, Sinouar planned to later join Iran, protector of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
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