Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Betarrested this Monday a soldier as the fifth suspect in the case of document leaks from military intelligence to Office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuand to the foreign press, according to the local newspaper The time of Israel.
The case gained great importance in the Israeli press due to the alleged involvement of the Prime Minister’s Office in the dissemination of these documents to condition Israeli public opinion on the management of the hostages and, with it, the progress of the war.
Sunday, a court lifted the gag regarding the arrest of another suspect, Eli Feldstein, who worked as a spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office. Furthermore, he revealed that the other three detainees belong to Israeli security.
The court considers that the dissemination of these documents could have led to a danger to Israel’s security interestsas well as for the release of the 97 captives who remained in Gaza since their kidnapping by Hamas militiamen on October 7 last year.
The leaks reached Netanyahu’s office from the army and from there to international newspapers. The Jewish Chronicle And Picturewhich published articles referring to these documents in early September, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Its publication coincided with a eventful week in national politics After the discovery on September 1 of bodies of six Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip, whose autopsies showed they had been murdered just hours before their discovery.
The deaths of the six people also coincided with the approval by the Israeli Security Cabinet of new demands to negotiate the ceasefire agreement with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The event caused enormous social unrest and led to a week of protests involving thousands of participants starting the same day.
On September 2, Netanyahu gave a televised press conference during which he showed a document attributed to Hamas according to which the Islamist organization could try to get the hostages out through the Philadelphia corridor (Gaza border with Egypt) and then take them to Iran.
In the following days, both The Jewish Chronicle as Picture They published articles on this subject, citing documents from the Islamist organization.
The first referred to the plan mentioned by Netanyahu during the press conference, while the second alluded to Hamas’ strategy of psychological pressure on the families of the hostages.
Shortly after, the Prime Minister himself reacted to Bild’s text by criticizing the families demonstrating against his government and demanding that he reach an agreement with the Islamists guaranteeing the return of the hostages. accusing them of falling “into Hamas’s trap” to “generate division” in Israel.
The army had to respond to the leaks by ensuring that the document cited by Picture It contained the written recommendations of a mid-ranking Hamas commander – not its leader, Yahya Sinwar, as the newspaper suggested – and ruled that their dissemination “constituted a serious offense” which would be subject to prosecution. investigation.
The furor over these foreign media outlets also led Netanyahu’s political rivals to accuse him of involvement in the leaks. to benefit from it and postpone the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
“If Netanyahu did not know that his closest aides were stealing documents, exploiting spies within the military, falsifying documents, revealing intelligence sources and passing secret documents to foreign newspapers to prevent the deal, then does he know about social media?” X the leader of the opposition, Yaïr Lapid.
