A security source who spoke with Israel Hayom claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's advisers Jonatan Urich, Srulik Einhorn and Eli Feldstein allegedly passed Qatar classified information from security discussions concerning Egypt.
According to the source, the information that reached the Qataris, which they then sought to use to "incriminate" Egypt in the Israeli media, originated in those classified discussions. The aim, the source alleged, was to enable Qatar to feed the damaging information back into the Israeli media through the prime minister's advisers, allowing Doha to gain a greater foothold in negotiations for a hostage deal. Some of the prime minister's advisers have been indicted in the so-called Bild affair.
Israeli defense officials were troubled at the time by the attacks on Egypt, arguing that they could endanger Israel's peace treaty with Cairo and make Egypt less willing to assist in efforts involving Hamas and Gaza to secure the hostages' release. Only later, according to the source, did defense officials realize that the campaign was in fact part of a Qatari influence operation.
At the height of the affair, even Israel's Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter said that Egypt was violating the peace treaty. The information turned out to be incorrect, raising the question of whether someone had deliberately fed him false information.
'Egypt is building up its forces in Sinai'
Until now, investigators examining the Qatargate affair had been working on the assumption that the flow of information went in one direction: Qatar enlisted Netanyahu advisers Urich, Einhorn and Feldstein, supplied them with materials portraying Egypt in a damaging light, and they in turn passed those materials to Israeli journalists.
A senior security source has now "broken his silence," however, presenting a picture that allegedly turns that assumption on its head. The dramatic claim now being revealed is that the material Qatar used to tarnish Egypt did not originate in open-source information online, nor in information that was already accepted by the prime minister, as one suspect in the case testified. Instead, it was allegedly taken directly from highly classified discussions at the heart of Israel's national security establishment.
According to the claim, the direction of the information flow was entirely reversed: The supposedly incriminating information about Egypt did not come from Qatar to the prime minister's advisers and then to journalists. Rather, it allegedly left the Israeli system, reached Qatar and was then marketed back to Israeli journalists.
It should be stressed that the allegation is that all three advisers leaked information originating in those discussions, not necessarily that they personally participated in the meetings.
According to the source, several security discussions were held during 2024, around March, April and May and afterward, attended by representatives of the Shin Bet security agency, the Israel Defense Forces, the National Security Council and the prime minister. The discussions focused on whether Egypt was violating its peace treaty with Israel, particularly regarding the deployment of forces in Sinai, a move requiring the approval of the prime minister, defense minister and IDF chief of staff.
The meetings were part of an effort to assess Israeli-Egyptian relations and evaluate the situation amid concerns that an escalation could spill over to the Egyptian side of the border and affect Israel. Questions about Egypt's commitment to Israel were raised again at another meeting during the same period.
'Artificially inflated'
To cross-check the information, Israel Hayom contacted a second security source who participated in the discussions. The source confirmed that meetings concerning Egypt had indeed taken place around those dates. According to the second source, the issue of alleged Egyptian violations was raised during the discussions, and the Qataris sought to leverage the subject and place it at the center of Israeli media coverage.
The source also said that, even at the time, he believed the Egypt issue was being artificially inflated beyond the bounds of a professional security discussion. He said he saw in real time how reports attacking Egypt and promoting Qatar coincided with the period in which the classified discussions were taking place.
The central suspicion in the Qatargate affair is that Netanyahu advisers Urich, Einhorn and Feldstein worked to relay messages to journalists in the name of a "diplomatic source" when the messages had in fact originated in Qatar.
The alleged purpose of the messages was to generate favorable media coverage of Qatar while diminishing Egypt's role as an honest broker in the hostage negotiations, effectively shaping the Israeli media agenda.
Indeed, comparing the dates of the classified discussions about Egypt with coverage in the Israeli media shows that reports on the subject appeared around the same periods. For example, toward the end of 2024, false reports began circulating on social media and in the Israeli press claiming that the Egyptian military was massing additional forces in Sinai in violation of its peace treaty with Israel.
Other reports touted Qatar's role in the hostage negotiations, portraying Doha as capable of securing the hostages' release in Egypt's place.
Still, other reports claimed that Egypt had allowed the Oct. 7, 2023, disaster to happen and had permitted smuggling from Gaza into Egypt, through which Egyptian military officers allegedly involved in the smuggling became wealthy.
Responses
Attorney Lior Epstein, who represents Srulik Einhorn, said in response: "First, Srulik Einhorn was never an adviser to the prime minister, never worked in the Prime Minister's Office and was never employed by it. Beyond that, the allegation concerning him is false, baseless and categorically denied. Attributing such acts to Mr. Einhorn is serious, unfounded and misleading."
Jonatan Urich said in response: "This is a complete lie, and it is no coincidence that it is being published by political rivals in the midst of an election campaign. I have never attended a classified discussion and have never given anyone anywhere any information whatsoever, classified or otherwise."
The Prime Minister's Office and Eli Feldstein's attorney did not respond to the report.
