JERUSALEM: Israeli police issued an arrest warrant for a former aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, accusing him of being implicated in two affairs involving the premier’s office.
Israel Einhorn, a former campaign adviser to Netanyahu who now lives in Serbia, appeared on a list of people whom the police suspect of involvement in the so-called “Bild affair” and are prevented from communicating with the prime minister’s office.
Next to Einhorn’s name a line was added saying there is a “pending arrest warrant against him,” according to a document submitted to the court.
“We can confirm the warrant,” a police spokesman told AFP.
In a post on his personal Facebook page, Netanyahu said the arrest warrant showed he was being targeted via his former aides.
“They can’t beat me in elections, so they start a lawsuit, the lawsuit falls apart so they bring in my advisers one after the other to try to blackmail them,” he said in a video message in Hebrew.
The Bild affair involved the leaking of classified intelligence from the Israeli military to the German tabloid Bild in September 2024. Two other Netanyahu aides were arrested and indicted for the leak.
The document aimed to prove that Hamas was not interested in a ceasefire deal, and to support Netanyahu’s claim that the hostages captured by Palestinian militants in their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel could only be released through military pressure rather than negotiations.
Einhorn has not returned to Israel since the investigation was opened, but he was questioned by Israeli investigators in Serbia last year.
He is also a suspect in the so-called “Qatargate” scandal, in which he and other close associates of Netanyahu are suspected of being recruited by Qatar to promote the Gulf country’s image in Israel.
Qatar hosts senior Hamas leaders and has played a mediating role between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement during the war in Gaza.
It also sent millions of dollars in cash to Gaza every month between 2018 and October 2023 to pay Hamas’s civil servants and for cash handouts to Gazan families.
The news of the warrant came after the police on Sunday detained a current senior aide to Netanyahu suspected of obstructing an investigation, with local media reporting that it was the premier’s chief of staff Tzachi Braverman.
Another former Netanyahu aide, Eli Feldstein, recently said during a televised interview that Braverman offered to “shut down” an army investigation into the Bild affair.
Feldstein himself is on trial for his alleged involvement in both the Bild leak and Qatargate.
In the same interview, Feldstein said Netanyahu was aware of the leak and was in favor of using the document to drum up public support for the war.
Israeli media reported on Monday that Braverman, picked to become Israel’s next ambassador to the UK, was barred from leaving the country for 30 days, and from being in contact with the Prime Minister’s office for 15 days.
AFP contacted the police and Braverman’s lawyer to confirm the bans but did not immediately receive a response.