Report: Israeli security officials confronted Netanyahu twice over emissary’s 2014 secret Hamas talks; he denied knowledge

Hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his reputed emissary Shlomi Fogel denied a report that they secretly negotiated with Hamas in 2014, Channel 12 reports further details of the alleged interaction, which has provoked a political firestorm.

The report says Netanyahu was twice confronted about the secret channel by senior Israeli security officials, and twice claimed that he knew nothing about it.

The TV network claims the Israeli security establishment found out in real time that Fogel, a business associate of the prime minister’s, was holding the talks with senior Hamas Gaza official Ghazi Hamad, aimed at reaching terms for a ceasefire in that summer’s Operation Protective Edge, even as three generals and the head of the Shin Bet were in Cairo holding official discussions on a ceasefire on behalf of the prime minister.

Senior security officials went to ask Netanyahu about Fogel’s activities. He acknowledged that he knew Fogel but claimed he was unaware of any such talks and said he had not dispatched Fogel to meet with Hamas, the report says. Netanyahu encouraged the security officials to summon Fogel and tell him to stop.

Fogel was indeed summoned, the TV report says, and claimed that he was “doing this with authorization and permission.” The security officials retorted that they were telling him, with the prime minister’s knowledge, to stop.

But Fogel did not stop. Within days, intelligence was received that the Fogel-Hamas discussions were continuing. So the security officials went a second time to speak with Netanyahu, who again claimed he knew nothing about the Fogel talks, the report says.

Netanyahu then phoned Yossi Cohen, later the head of the Mossad, who was at the time the head of the National Security Council, and told Cohen to tell Fogel to stop, the report continues. Eyal Zamir, Netanyahu’s military secretary at the time, and the current IDF chief of staff, was in the room, the report says.

Fogel continued, nonetheless, and was summoned again and told he was breaking the law. He then pulled out “dozens of pages” of documents, “with all the records of his meetings… all the messages he had been instructed to convey to Ghazi Hamad,” the TV report says.

The security officials realized that this was Netanyahu’s modus operandi, the report says. It describes the episode as echoing Netanyahu’s appointment of billionaire philanthropist and World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder as his secret personal emissary to negotiate with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad regarding the Golan Heights, in 1998, during his first term as prime minister.