In affidavit, PM cites assertions by Bar that Hamas was acting with ‘restraint’ before Oct. 7

In his affidavit to the High Court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quotes from several security assessments made by Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar during the course of 2023 in which Bar said that Hamas and its then leader Yahya Sinwar had adopted a policy of “restraint” inside Gaza and did not want to risk what they had built inside the territory.

Netanyahu does so to refute Bar’s claims that he warned the prime minister before October 7 that the government’s judicial overhaul agenda was destabilizing Israel’s security.

“In the Strip, the Hamas leadership has in internal discussions validated the strategy of restraint in the Strip, and inflaming [the situation] in the West Bank,” quotes the prime minister from a background briefing Bar sent Netanyahu on April 4, 2023.

In a meeting on July 2, 2023 to evaluate Hamas’s control of Gaza, Netanyahu said Hamas was likely holding discussions over the societal divisions in Israel surrounding the government’s judicial overhaul agenda, and asked how Hamas was viewing the situation.

“The product [of Hamas’s discussions] is to look at the West Bank,” stated one intelligence official, who Netanyahu cites from minutes of the meeting.

“But not to endanger the Gazan project, and this is a very delicate balance,” said Bar, according to Netanyahu’s affidavit.

Netanyahu also quotes from a security document Bar sent him on October 3, 2023, in which the Shin Bet chief said that “looking forward, renewing understandings between Hamas and Israel on the familiar basis of ‘security quiet in exchange for relief’ has the potential for preserving stability in the strip (possibly even in the long-run), especially if Israel and the rest of the players stand by the promise of creating a positive economic horizon.”