Police in Israel have detained and questioned several people in connection with alleged leaks of classified documents concerning hostages held in Gaza, an Israeli court revealed on Friday.
At least one of the detainees was a former spokesperson of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, according to media reports following the partial lifting of a gag order on the affair Friday. The detainees’ identities have not been released due to the gag order. The Prime Minister’s Office denied having a leak.
Critics of Netanyahu have presented the affair as fresh evidence that he is thwarting a deal with Hamas for the hostages’ release. His advocates have argued that the documents showed no such deal was feasible, and accused authorities of selectively investigating those leaks while ignoring others.
The affair is said to concern Hamas documents obtained by Israel. One of the documents, reportedly seen by the German newspaper Bild, may have served as the basis for an article in September according to which Hamas was not interested in a deal and was only using talks to increase domestic pressure on the government.
Another document, reportedly given to The Jewish Chronicle by an Israeli posing as a journalist, said Hamas was planning to smuggle hostages out of the Gaza Strip through its border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor. The paper has since retracted the article.
In recent months Netanyahu has said Israel must hold the Philadelphia Corridor to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its capabilities.
Advocates of a deal with Hamas are pushing for far-reaching concessions to the terrorist group to retrieve the remaining 101 hostages it is holding. Opponents warn that doing this will incentivize additional abductions and allow Hamas to evade or counteract Israel’s ongoing efforts to dismantle it.
In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said he had “learned about the document from the media.” The alleged former aide who’d been detained was never exposed to classified material, the PMO said on Saturday.
“The document only helped the effort to retrieve the hostages, and certainly did not compromise it,” the statement read, apparently referencing the one reported on by Bild. The leaked document and Bild article “exposed Hamas’s methods for applying psychological pressure domestically and abroad on the government and Israeli society, by blaming Israel for the failure of talks to retrieve the hostages, when everyone knows—as has been confirmed repeatedly by U.S. officials—that Hamas is preventing the deal,” it added.
The PMO has requested that the attorney general lift the gag order on the affair, the office said on Sunday.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid Party said in a speech in Tel Aviv on Saturday that the investigation shows that Netanyahu tried to “torpedo the hostage deal, incite against hostages’ relatives and deceive the public about the war’s objectives,” one of which is securing the hostages’ return.
In its statement, the PMO noted that whereas it “does not have a leak, there have been dozens of leaks published in the media locally and abroad that revealed details about the negotiations to retrieve the hostages, from classified Cabinet meetings and other forums, yet no one was questioned. The reason for this is interesting.”
Hamas took 251 hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, when its terrorists invaded Israel and murdered some 1,200 people. Israel vowed to dismantle Hamas and retrieve the hostages when it launched a military campaign in Gaza. It has since escalated into a military conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, as well as some of its other proxies.
