Why were five people arrested in Israel over leaked Hamas documents? | News on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

A new political storm has engulfed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after several people were arrested in connection with the alleged leak of classified documents from his office.

The documents in question are allegedly Hamas military strategy documents that were found by Israeli military intelligence in Gaza and subsequently manipulated by suspects within or near the Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry. The documents were then said to have been leaked to the German newspaper Bild and the British Jewish Chronicle just as a potential Gaza ceasefire deal was being negotiated in September this year, which ultimately fell through.

It is unclear how changes were made to these documents, but they are believed to have made it appear that Hamas intended to smuggle the Israeli prisoners held in Gaza to Egypt and then to either Iran or Yemen.

The prime minister’s spokesman, Eli Feldstein, was among the five people arrested on suspicion of leaking and manipulating intelligence information.

Announcing the arrests on Friday, an Israeli court in Rishon LeTsiyon said a joint investigation by the army, police and Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service had led to suspicions of a “violation of national security through the unlawful provision of “classified information,” which also “harmed the achievement of Israel’s war goals.”

The leak, Judge Menachem Mizrahi said – lifting parts of the previous gag order that had received limited reporting – posed a risk to “sensitive information and intelligence sources” and compromised efforts to achieve “the objectives of the war in Gaza.” .

Netanyahu denied any wrongdoing by members of his office and claimed he only became aware of the leaked document through the media, according to a statement released Saturday.

How big is that?

“This is big,” Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and former political adviser to several senior Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, told Al Jazeera.

“This is potentially worse than Watergate, which ironically is the hotel where Netanyahu stayed on his last visit to Washington,” he added, referring to the residence that was linked to the early 1970s scandal that led to the downfall of who led to the downfall of US President Richard Nixon gave his name.

“We don’t know where this will end. We don’t know how (Eli Feldstein) got so close to the center of power after failing the appropriate security clearances.”

Barak continued: “However, we know that this whole matter has endangered our soldiers, the hostages (in Gaza) and all the intelligence sources that our military has there, and that is a big deal.”

What is the motive behind this leak?

Many observers, including Netanyahu’s critics inside Israel, have accused the prime minister of deliberately prolonging the war for his own ends.

In September, Yair Lapid, echoing the sentiments of his opposition colleague Benny Gantz a month earlier, described the massacre in Gaza as a “forever war” that would last as long as Netanyahu and his government remained in power.

The families of prisoners held in Gaza have regularly accused the prime minister of prolonging the war by setting off an air raid siren outside his home last month and announcing a series of rallies this Saturday calling for a final ceasefire agreement , which will endure Family members returned home.

Even the leader of Israel’s staunchest ally, US President Joe Biden, expressed frustration that Netanyahu had sidestepped the terms of the ceasefire, telling Time magazine in June that there was “every reason” to believe that Netanyahu would do so Prolong the war for political reasons.

Netanyahu was accused of fraud and breach of trust in two cases and of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a third case. Lawyers representing the prime minister have repeatedly called for court hearings to be postponed out of deference to Netanyahu’s role as a wartime leader.

However, to remain a leader during the war, Netanyahu must also retain the support of his coalition cabinet, in which hardliners such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will be content with nothing less than an absolute victory in Gaza – meaning , that they would not agree to a ceasefire – and possibly the displacement of its population.

Following a series of provocative statements on Gaza, the UK is reportedly considering imposing sanctions on Smotrich after he suggested that starving Gaza’s population could be justified, while Ben-Gvir is also being considered for sanctions has called violent settlers in the West Bank “heroes” and has also spoken of relocation to Gaza following the “voluntary migration” of the population.

In October, after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, whose support Netanyahu needs to maintain his fractious coalition cabinet, called for an increase in military pressure on the enclave where Israel has already killed more than 43,000 people .

“Now the IDF (Israeli Army) must ensure that there is no resident of Gaza who does not know that Sinwar is dead. “It must increase the strong military pressure in Gaza while providing safe passage and financial reward to those who return our hostages and agree to lay down their arms and leave Gaza,” Smotrich posted on X in The, according to a report Times of Israel.

Ben-Gvir was equally direct, calling on Israel to “continue with all our strength until absolute victory.”

Was a ceasefire agreement reached for Gaza in September?

Observers believed it was so.

In early September, Hamas confirmed it was ready to commit to U.S. proposals in June to stop fighting without “new conditions.”

The US proposal, which called for a three-stage end to the war that would lead to a permanent ceasefire and prisoner exchange, was rejected outright by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir just days after it was published. Both ministers threatened to leave the Cabinet and bring down the government if the Biden deal was approved.

In late August, Netanyahu, supported by much of his cabinet, introduced maintaining control of the Philadelphia Corridor (the strip of land between Gaza and Egypt not mentioned in the US proposal) as an essential prerequisite for any peace deal.

Justifying this condition, Netanyahu said at two press conferences in Hebrew and English on September 4 that Hamas could “easily smuggle hostages out… into the Sinai Desert” and from there to “Iran or… Yemen.” He then added: “They are gone forever.”

The following day, Britain’s oldest Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Chronicle, published an “exclusive” story that appeared to be based entirely on the doctored documents, according to analysts who spoke to media outlet +972. These appeared to confirm Hamas’s alleged plans to smuggle both the prisoners and much of its leadership out of Gaza, just as the Israeli prime minister had suggested a day earlier.

Hamas’ plan, The Jewish Chronicle reported in an article that has since been removed from its website, “was reportedly revealed during the interrogation of a captured senior Hamas official, as well as through information from documents released on Thursday, August 29.” Six bodies of the murdered hostages were recovered.”

What does this mean for Gaza?

By September 11, around the time a ceasefire would have been possible, Israel had killed 41,020 people in its war against Gaza. It is now at 43,341.

Conditions in northern Gaza, currently under Israeli siege that began about a month after the amended documents were published in European newspapers in September, have become so severe that U.N. chiefs described them as “apocalyptic.”

“People have died as a result,” Mairav ​​Zonszein, senior Israel analyst at the NGO International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera. “In addition to the thousands of Palestinians who have been killed, the soldiers and hostages have also died because of the failure to reach a ceasefire agreement.”

Representatives of the families of the remaining Gaza prisoners told reporters that news of the altered Hamas documents represented “a moral low point without depth.” This is a fatal damage to the remaining trust between the government and its citizens.”

Will this scandal impact Netanyahu in any way?

Probably not.

Prior to the current trial, there were allegations of corruption and unlawful conduct against the prime minister and his family.

In 2017, his personal lawyer and cousin David Shimron was accused of trying to bribe German officials to part with submarines and other naval vessels.

In 2018, his wife Sara was convicted of misuse of public funds, while his son Yair Netanyahu was on the losing end of several defamation lawsuits. These ranged from his untrue allegations in 2000 that a woman, Dana Cassidy, had an affair with his father’s main political rival, Benny Gantz, to his discovery in 2022 on a number of social media accounts Posts after she had an affair with Rep. Stav Shaffir criticized his father for apparently violating the country’s COVID quarantine laws.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu is by far Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

While this current crisis may seem extremely damaging, there is no evidence yet that Netanyahu makes a direct connection to the manipulated documents.

However, “the issue of hostages is incredibly sensitive for people,” former Israeli ambassador and Netanyahu critic Alon Pinkas told Al Jazeera. “If evidence actually emerges that he lied and deceived at the expense of the hostages, it will be bad for him,” he said, before warning that both Israel and Netanyahu have been here before.

“He has this office of subpar sycophants who will probably take the fall for him,” he said of those like Eli Feldstein who have already been arrested, “and an opposition that, like penguins in the zoo, comes out every now and then.” and then, like at the weekend” – when opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz held a joint press conference – “sneeze and then return to their cave”.