Israeli internal intelligence arrested four Israelis, one of whom works in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, on charges of leaking and falsifying classified documents concerning the ongoing war on Gaza, an Israeli court revealed over the weekend.
The fabricated documents allegedly leaked by one of Netanyahu’s aides were falsely attributed to the late Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar. The revelations of the recent fabrications repudiate Israeli propaganda claims of Hamas’s alleged intransigence in ceasefire negotiations throughout the war, especially during the last round of negotiations over the summer.
During those negotiations, Netanyahu had insisted that Israel must maintain a permanent military presence along the Philadelphi corridor, a strip of land bordering Gaza and Egypt, because he claimed that Hamas was using it to smuggle weapons and supplies.
At around the same time, the leaked documents falsely claimed that the Philadelphi corridor was to be used by Hamas to smuggle Israeli captives out of Gaza alongside Sinwar.
The leak case was classified by Israel’s military censor until the Israeli court revealed the name of the main suspect. According to Israeli reports that followed the easing of censorship, highly classified documents acquired by the Israeli army in Gaza were misquoted, misattributed, and selectively leaked alongside fabricated information to the media in a way that served Netanyahu’s purpose of sabotaging a potential ceasefire and captives exchange deal — in service of his agenda of prolonging the war.