By Isabel Kershner

 JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities are investigating a civilian who has been working over the past year in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is suspected of illegally obtaining and leaking classified documents to the news media.

The documents helped support Netanyahu’s reasoning for adding tough new conditions for a ceasefire deal with Hamas over the summer, amid intense public pressure for a deal to release Israeli hostages and end the fighting in the Gaza Strip.

The case has roiled Israel, where critics have accused Netanyahu of torpedoing a deal to return hostages and of prolonging the war in Gaza for political reasons. Key members of his governing coalition had threatened to quit if he made concessions to Hamas.

On Sunday (3), an Israeli court partially lifted a gag order to identify Eliezer Feldstein, who was hired last year to work as a spokesperson in Netanyahu’s office, as a suspect in the case. Three other suspects in the case are members of the military and security establishment, according to the court, and have not been publicly named.

The investigation has revolved around the publication and manipulation of real and purported intelligence information in media outlets abroad, according to Israeli news reports and to an Israeli official who was not authorized to discuss sensitive information, including the case. The London-based Jewish Chronicle published — and then retracted — a report claiming Hamas was planning to smuggle Israeli hostages from Gaza to Egypt. A classified document that was leaked to the German newspaper Bild claimed that Hamas was trying to manipulate the Israeli public and wanted to draw out the negotiations.

How did this all get started?

On Sept. 1, the Israeli military announced that six Israeli hostages had been found dead in a tunnel in Gaza after being fatally shot by their captors, prompting a surge of mass protests and a wave of national anger and grief.

About 100 people taken captive by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, remain in Gaza. At least a third of them have been declared dead by the Israeli authorities.

On Sept. 2, in a televised news conference, Netanyahu presented his arguments for a new condition for a ceasefire deal with Hamas: Israel must maintain a permanent presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Without that presence, Netanyahu said, Hamas could smuggle hostages across the border into Egypt’s Sinai Desert, and from there to Iran or Yemen, where he said they could disappear forever.

He also displayed a handwritten document in Arabic that he said was the work of high-ranking Hamas members, which he said had been found in January by Israeli soldiers in an underground command post in Gaza.

The document contained instructions for increasing the psychological pressure on Israel by issuing videos and images of hostages and casting doubt on the Israeli government’s narrative that its ground operation in Gaza would help release the hostages. Netanyahu said it showed Hamas’ strategy of sowing internal discord in Israel and suggested that the popular protests against his government played into Hamas’ hands.

When did the leaks happen?

On Sept. 5, soon after Netanyahu’s news conference, The Jewish Chronicle, a British community newspaper, published a report by a freelance journalist. The journalist, Elon Perry, claimed he had obtained Israeli intelligence showing that the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, was preparing to flee Gaza, via the Philadelphi Corridor, to Iran, and to take Israeli hostages with him.

The report cited intelligence gleaned from a senior Hamas official who was interrogated by Israel and from documents seized on the day the bodies of the six hostages were recovered.

Asked about the report in The Jewish Chronicle, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesperson, said that he was unaware of any such intelligence or plan by Sinwar.

The Jewish Chronicle later removed that story and others written by Perry from its website and ended its association with him. The incident cast a cloud on The Jewish Chronicle, a 180-year-old newspaper whose ownership has been shrouded in mystery.

On Sept. 6, a day after The Jewish Chronicle article ran, Bild published an article it said was based on a Hamas document laying out its plan for psychological warfare against Israel on the hostage issue, claiming that Hamas was in no rush to reach a deal or end the war. Some of the messaging was similar to points Netanyahu made in his news conference.

The Israeli military issued a statement Monday (4) saying it appeared that the document cited in the Bild article was found about five months ago and was “written as a recommendation by middle ranks in Hamas, and not by Sinwar,” as the Bild headline may have suggested. The document contained information similar to that found in earlier documents, the military said, adding, “The leaking of the document constitutes a serious violation.”

Critics say the exposure of the purported intelligence appeared to be part of a disinformation campaign by Netanyahu or his supporters, intended to dampen the campaign for the hostages’ release and influence Israeli public opinion in favour of the prime minister’s negotiating positions.

Was Netanyahu involved? 

Netanyahu has not been questioned about the allegations and his office has denied leaking information. Many details of the case remain murky because of the gag order.

In one of its first statements about the affair, Netanyahu’s office said Friday that nobody from his office had been questioned or detained. On Saturday (2), the prime minister’s office offered a different version, saying that the suspect in question — later revealed to be Feldstein — had never participated in security discussions and had not seen or received classified information.

Netanyahu’s office also accused the authorities of carrying out a selective investigation, arguing that numerous reports based on leaked information had been published during the war without any consequences. It described the investigation as “aggressive and biased”.

How has the public reacted?

Israel has been in uproar over the revelations that seeped out during the weekend. Hagai Levine, a professor and Israeli public health expert who is active in the campaign to bring the hostages home, wrote in a social media post-Sunday that “the hostages scam of Netanyahu’s office appears to be more serious than the Watergate affair that led to the resignation of President Nixon.” He described the allegations as a “combination of the abandonment of the abductees, breach of trust and the undermining of state security.”

What are the latest developments?

In the first official acknowledgement of the suspected security breach, a magistrate’s court in central Israel on Friday partially lifted the gag order on the case.

The court ruling stated that several people had been detained as part of a joint investigation by the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency, the Israeli police and the military.

The judge, Menahem Mizrahi, said they were suspected of “a security breach due to the illegal transfer of classified information,” as well as putting sensitive information and sources at risk, and harming the chances of achieving the war’s objectives in Gaza.

In a subsequent ruling Sunday allowing the publication of Feldstein’s name, the judge specified that the war objective he was referring to was the return of the hostages.

-New York Times