Netanyahu Aide Arrested Over Intel Leak Which Damaged Ceasefire Talks
Israeli police have arrested a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and four others for allegedly leaking classified information to foreign media, court documents released on Sunday revealed. The intelligence allegedly claimed Hamas was planning to smuggle Israeli captives from Gaza to Egypt.
Opposition leaders say the intelligence was leaked to take pressure off Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas that would bring home the roughly 100 Israeli captives still held by the Palestinian resistance movement. It is estimated that roughly 70 remain alive.
Netanyahu has repeatedly sabotaged ceasefire talks with Hamas since the start of the war on October 7 last year, despite heavy pressure from the families of the captives to reach a deal.
Court documents released on Sunday identified Eliezer Feldstein, an aide to Netanyahu, as one of several people being detained and interrogated over the leak of “classified and sensitive intelligence information.” The names of the other four detained persons have not been cleared for publication by Israel's military censors.
The intelligence was leaked to two foreign media outlets, the Jewish Chronicle in the UK and Bild in Germany, both of which published stories about the leaked intelligence. The Jewish Chronicle later retracted its story.
The court documents said that information taken from the Israeli military’s systems and “illegally issued” may have damaged Israel’s ability to free the captives held by Hamas in Gaza.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid on Sunday accused the prime minister’s office of leaking “faked secret documents to torpedo the possibility of a hostage deal – to shape a public opinion influence operation against the hostages’ families.”
By claiming that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning to flee to Egypt with the captives, the leaked documents appeared to promote Netanyahu’s claim in the minds of the Israeli public that any ceasefire deal must allow Israel to keep its forces on the Philadelphia Corridor, which runs along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Otherwise, the captives could end up in Egypt’s Sinai or “pop up in Iran or Yemen,” Netanyahu claimed.
Netanyahu added the demand that Israel be allowed to continue occupying the Philadelphia Corridor in the 11th hour of negotiations for a ceasefire this summer. The demand torpedoed the talks, as Hamas has long insisted on a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as part of any ceasefire deal.
The issue with the leaks from Netanyahu's office is that intelligence assets may have been burned not for military purposes but for PR or politicking, @da64 tells @laura_i24 pic.twitter.com/vFs4LNEI7h
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) November 4, 2024
Members of the Likud, Religious Zionism, and Jewish Power parties, which comprise Netanyahu’s governing coalition, have stated it is their priority to continue the war. They hope to ethnically cleanse Gaza and annex it, ideally to build Jewish settlements atop destroyed Palestinian cities.
Israeli soldiers have stated the army is currently carrying out the so-called “Generals’ Plan” to forcibly expel the remaining 300,000 residents in northern Gaza and move them to the south of the strip. The plan calls for starving or killing any militants or Palestinian civilians who refuse or are unable to leave.