Israeli justice revealed on Sunday, November 3, that Benyamin Netanyahu's entourage was involved in a serious case of leaking and using top secret documents for political purposes. An investigation carried out by the Shin Bet, the police and the Israeli army since September 8 resulted, on November 1, in the arrest of four collaborators of the prime minister, including Eliezer Feldstein, a former spokesperson, the only suspect. whose identity has been revealed. He allegedly extracted secret information from the Israeli army and leaked it to the press, “endangering national security and intelligence sources”according to Judge Menachem Mizrahi of the Rishon Lezion Magistrate's Court.
The facts date back to the beginning of September. Six Israeli hostages have just been killed in Gaza and Benjamin Netanyahu faces unprecedented protests on September 1. He is accused of abandoning the hostages while negotiations around a release agreement are slipping.
On September 4, the Prime Minister summoned the foreign press. Objective: to explain that it is necessary to maintain Israeli forces in the Philadelphia corridor, bordering Egypt, even at the cost of the failure of an agreement on hostages. Argument: if the Israeli army does not control the area, Hamas could “easily smuggle hostages out…to the Sinai desert”and from there, towards “Iran or… Yemen”.
“100% lies”
In the two days that followed, the British media Jewish Chronicle and the German tabloid Bild bring this argument to life. “The secret plan of(Yahya) Sinwar to smuggle hostages into Iran”headlines the British newspaper on September 5, citing documents supposedly seized by the Israeli army on August 29 in Rafah. Bild publishes for its part a “exclusive document”presented as found on the computer or approved by Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas, which explains the group's strategy to use the hostages as psychological pressure and to delay a cease-fire.
Military sources cited by the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot today denounce “wild fabrications”of the “100% lies”and castigate a “campaign to influence Israeli opinion in favor of Netanyahu”. If leaks are commonplace in the Israeli political-media system, this one is serious. The arrest of the Prime Minister's spokesperson brings it back to the latter's entourage.
“The investigation must verify whether it was on his order or not: if Netanyahu knew, he is complicit in one of the most serious security offenses under the law,” accuses Yaïr Lapid, the leader of the opposition.
In fact, Eliezer Feldstein did not have the security clearance to access these documents. “There is a system here in which a limited number of people decide to do what they want with top secret documents,” sums it up Yediot Aharonot.
The Prime Minister's Office distances itself from the leak, and claims to have been informed of it by the media. “This affair probably won’t bring down Netanyahu”notes Anshel Pfeffer, journalist and biographer of the Likud leader, on X: “The investigation risks being slow and inconclusive. But it will constitute further proof that he is focused on his personal war of political survival. »
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