Netanyahu visited Gaza without Shin Bet escort yesterday, report says

During yesterday’s visit to the northern Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not accompanied by a representative of the Shin Bet security service, as he has been in past tours, the Kan public broadcaster reports.

Usually, a Shin Bet representative responsible for the area the prime minister was visiting would accompany him and give him an assessment.

In response to the report, the Prime Minister’s Office said: “This was a military visit and not a Shin Bet visit.”

The absence of a Shin Bet officer came on the same day as a gag order was lifted on a classified leak affair, in which a Shin Bet official was detained for leaking information to politicians and journalists on the agency’s probes into the October 7 massacre, and into the possibility “Kahanism” taking root in the police force.

The development further increased tensions between the political echelon and the country’s security and judicial system, already at boiling point with the government’s moves to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

Netanyahu shared a post by his ruling Likud that accused Bar and Baharav-Miara of turning the service into a “private militia.”