PM’s chief of staff barred from leaving the country following police interrogation

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Tzachi Braverman, was released from police custody on Sunday evening after he was interrogated at length about his alleged attempt to obstruct a probe into the leak of classified documents from the Prime Minister’s Office to German tabloid Bild.

Police said on Sunday morning that an aide to the premier had been detained on “suspicion of obstructing investigative procedures,” but did not mention Braverman by name.

The interrogation, conducted by the Lahav 433 major crimes unit, was reported to have lasted around 13 hours, and Braverman was released under restrictive conditions, including a 15-day ban on entering the Prime Minister’s Office and a 30-day ban on leaving the country.

The latter restriction could pose problems for Braverman, the Ynet news outlet reported, and risks delaying his entry into the post of ambassador to the United Kingdom, which has been left unfilled since the conclusion of Tzipi Hotovely’s term in September 2025.

Similar restrictions were also reportedly imposed on Omer Mansour, a spokesperson in the PMO who was called for questioning alongside Braverman on Sunday.

The pair were detained for interrogation after Netanyahu’s former spokesman and the key suspect in the Bild leak affair, Eli Feldstein, alleged last month that Braverman knew of a covert investigation into the leak months before it was publicized and had assured Feldstein that he’d be able to quash the probe.

In an interview with the Kan public broadcaster last month, Feldstein said Braverman asked to meet him late at night in an underground parking lot in the Kirya military headquarters, where he informed him that the IDF had launched an investigation into the leak.

Braverman allegedly told Feldstein that the list of suspects went as high as the Prime Minister’s Office and urged him to inform him if he was in any way connected to the leak, as he would be able to “shut it down.” According to Feldstein, Mansour witnessed the meeting.

In the wake of the interview, police opened an investigation into Feldstein’s claim.

The Kan interview was Feldstein’s first media appearance since being arrested in October 2024 and later charged for leaking stolen intelligence to Bild the previous month. The German publication presented that classified document as evidence that Hamas was not interested in reaching a hostage deal with Israel to end the war triggered on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terror group led an invasion of southern Israel during which the hostages were abducted.

Feldstein was summoned by police on Sunday for a face-to-face confrontation with Braverman, which, according to Channel 12, lasted less than 15 minutes.

During the pair’s brief interaction, the report said, Braverman acknowledged that a meeting in the Kirya parking lot may have taken place, but denied ever warning Feldstein about a covert investigation into the leak.

Mansour was said to have also acknowledged the meeting, but claimed he did not remember what was discussed.

Braverman’s lawyer, Jack Chen, confirmed that his client had been released under conditions that include a ban on contacting Netanyahu or working in the office as well as being barred from leaving the country.

“He answered all the investigators’ questions, and denied every invented version of events put forward by the defendant [Feldstein],” said Chen in the statement. “We are confident that at the conclusion of the investigation, the competent authorities will announce that there is no truth to the claim made by [Feldstein].”

The Bild affair followed the execution of six Israeli hostages at the hands of their Hamas captors, when Israeli troops approached the tunnel where they were located in the southern Gaza city of Rafah at the end of August 2024.

The execution sparked massive public uproar against the government, which critics saw as the obstacle in ceasefire negotiations due to Netanyahu’s perceived prioritization of an amorphous “total victory” over Hamas at the expense of hostages’ lives. The document leaked to Bild appeared to be an attempt by Netanyahu’s office to shift the blame for the failure of talks to Hamas.

Feldstein is also a suspect in the so-called Qatargate affair, in which he and the prime minister’s top media adviser, Jonatan Urich, are suspected of taking money to spread pro-Qatari messaging to reporters, in order to boost the Gulf state’s image as a mediator in hostage talks between Israel and Hamas, all while in the prime minister’s employ.

Since Feldstein was first arrested last year, Netanyahu’s office has flip-flopped in its position on him. After initially distancing itself from him, when it became clear that the aide had in fact been close to Netanyahu the PMO shifted to calling him a “patriot.”

But, since he implicated the prime minister and Urich, Netanyahu’s office has turned on him again, accusing him of lying and insisting that the premier and his other staffers did not know about any illicit activity.