Netanyahu’s party: Arrest of PM’s aides in Qatargate probe is ‘coup d’état’ by AG, Shin Bet
As advisers are held and premier himself is summoned by police, opposition figures say his ‘wave of spin’ is meant to divert attention from other issues, call for him to be probed
Following the arrest of two of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top aides on Monday, and with the premier summoned to testify to police, his ruling Likud party released a statement Monday afternoon railing against “fabricated investigations,” alleging that the Attorney General’s Office and Shin Bet security service were working to “carry out a coup d’état through arrest warrants.”
The Shin Bet and police are currently investigating members of Netanyahu’s inner circle over alleged ties between them and Doha as part of the so-called Qatargate probe, and two former Netanyahu aides, Jonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, were arrested earlier Monday in connection with the investigation.
After the two aides were arrested, Netanyahu himself was summoned by the attorney general to testify at the police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit, cutting short his testimony in the ongoing corruption trial against him
The Likud statement was issued while Netanyahu was reportedly en route to give his police testimony.
“The thuggish arrest of Jonatan Urich is a new low in the political hunt to overthrow a right-wing prime minister and to prevent the dismissal of the failed Shin Bet chief,” Likud said in the statement, referring to Ronen Bar, whose recent firing by Netanyahu is being challenged at the High Court of Justice.
“After the fabricated investigations initiated by the Attorney General’s Office and the Shin Bet chief into the falsification of minutes in the Prime Minister’s Office and into the blackmailing of an officer in the Prime Minister’s Military Secretariat blew up in their faces, they invented another new fabricated affair about Qatar, which will also explode very quickly,” the statement continued.
After a court lifted a gag order on the matter last November, it was reported that Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, was suspected of forgery and fraud over the illegal altering of records in the Prime Minister’s Office. He was also suspected of blackmailing an IDF officer to allegedly alter minutes from wartime meetings by threatening him with a sensitive video recording.
“The attempt to intimidate Jonatan Urich to extract from him false testimony against the prime minister through blackmail with threats and a false arrest is another criminal act by a frightened legal clique,” the Likud statement continued, accusing the Attorney General’s Office and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar of “conducting futile investigations in the dark under a gag order, in an attempt to prevent the dismissal of the Shin Bet chief, using Urich and others as cannon fodder.”
“Their goal is to carry out a coup d’état through arrest warrants. This is not an investigation. This is not law enforcement. This is an attempted assassination of democracy and an attempt to replace the will of the people with the rule of bureaucrats,” the party asserted.
Earlier this month, the cabinet voted to fire Bar in a move that was frozen by the High Court. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, whom the government is also working to dismiss, warned that the ouster faced legal difficulties, in part due to the ongoing Shin Bet probe of Qatargate.
Responding to the Likud’s statement, Opposition leader Yair Lapid noted that Netanyahu’s party has not denied that those close to the premier received money from Doha.
“The sentence that does not appear in the Likud statement and that should be noted: ‘No one from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office received money from Qatar,'” Lapid declared in the Knesset plenum.
“The reason this sentence does not appear there is that people in Benjamin Netanyahu’s office received money from a hostile country during wartime. He is being investigated for this now, and they should all be investigated for this,” Lapid argued. “Of all the criminal security scandals in the Prime Minister’s Office, this is not only the most serious, it is also the most disturbing and dangerous.”
Yisrael Beytenu party chief Avigdor Liberman similarly called out the “wave of spin” surrounding the Qatargate scandal and the replacement of Ronen Bar, saying the confusion “is designed to obscure the true priorities of the State of Israel.”
Speaking to reporters ahead of his right-wing opposition party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Liberman called the latest developments in the scandal “a media earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale,” and claimed that Netanyahu’s alleged spin is meant to distract Israelis from three main national priorities: the return of the hostages, the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into Hamas’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, and the passage of a universal conscription law that includes ultra-Orthodox men.
“We must not forget what the priorities are,” Liberman said. “These three issues are critical to the security of the state and our civil resilience. And unfortunately, they are being pushed out of the public discourse. I call on my friends in the opposition not to forget the correct priorities. The Knesset is going into recess, but these three issues are still on the table — unresolved and unanswered. I hope that coalition members will also come to their senses and understand: Beyond the spins and headlines, there is a complex reality.”
Also commenting on the developments in the Qatargate scandal, The Democrats party chairman Yair Golan called for an investigation of the prime minister himself.
“What we see today is a destabilized prime minister trying to sabotage and disrupt the investigation into the Qatari money affair,” Golan tweeted.
“Netanyahu not only failed on security, he must be investigated on the serious suspicion that he sold security for money — the same money that financed Hamas and the October massacre that reached the top of his office and perhaps even him. Netanyahu will do everything to prevent the truth from coming to light, so the attorney general did the right thing by immediately ordering Netanyahu to be summoned for questioning,” the left-wing party leader continued.
Though Netanyahu was summoned for questioning on Monday, his testimony would be given as someone with knowledge of the affair, rather than as a suspect, according to Channel 12 news. The decision as to whether to subsequently question Netanyahu under caution, meaning as a suspect in the case, would be made only after he first gives open testimony.
The Qatargate probe was launched following revelations that Netanyahu’s former spokesman Feldstein — who has been charged with harming national security in a case involving the theft and leaking of classified IDF documents — worked for Qatar via an international firm contracted by Doha to feed Israeli journalists pro-Qatar stories, all while he was employed in the PMO.
Ordered by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in late February, the investigation is being conducted by Lahav 433 and the Shin Bet.
Earlier in March, police questioned both Feldstein and Urich on suspicion of contacting a foreign agent, fraud, money laundering and bribery. No further details were made available for publication due to a court-imposed gag order on the case.
The investigation focuses specifically on alleged Qatari payments to Netanyahu’s close circle between May 2022 and October 2024. It has been conducted largely under Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who is currently in the process of being fired by Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has slammed the investigations against his staffers as a “witch hunt,” and the aides have denied wrongdoing.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.