The security breach affair at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office posed severe risks to hostage rescue operations and the lives of soldiers, a source involved in the investigation told Kan News on Monday.
“This was a [life-threatening affair] that the Shin Bet had to step in and stop,” the source noted. “Had we not interrupted the leak, it could have endangered the lives of security forces in the Strip, and hostages might have been harmed.”
Earlier in the day, an IDF officer was arrested as another suspect in the case. The investigation revealed that the leaked material was not a document recovered by soldiers in Gaza but rather a different type of intelligence, the exposure of which could have jeopardized intelligence sources.
Warnings about the main suspect ignored
The Prime Minister’s Office had been warned that Eliezer Feldstein, one of the primary suspects in the case, had failed a security clearance. Despite the warning, Feldstein continued in his role.
Recently, Netanyahu’s office has tried to distance itself from Feldstein, asserting that he was not formally part of the office staff. However, he continued working in his role until days ago, despite the clear warning and the information available to senior officials in the office.
Feldstein is suspected of leaking sensitive security documents as part of an orchestrated campaign to thwart a hostage deal, court documents released on Sunday revealed.
It has already been billed as one of the most serious security breaches in the country’s history. Details are scarce, but the court decision showed that four individuals were under investigation, including civilian Eliezer Feldstein, a close associate of Netanyahu’s who had been informally working for him.
Alleged leaks to foreign media
Some of the documents in question are widely believed to be related to two reports from September, near the peak of public pressure in support of a hostage deal after the bodies of six hostages, who had been executed just days before, were retrieved from Rafah.
The reports, in the German newspaper Bild and the British Jewish Chronicle, supported views the prime minister had been espousing at the time that Hamas did not intend to go through with a hostage deal and that it was planning on smuggling hostages out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt.
The prime minister used the latter to emphasize his claim about the necessity of soldiers remaining along the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border.
Tovah Lazaroff and Eliav Breuer contributed to this report.
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