The two suspects in the “Qatargate” case, Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, will be under house arrest for the next two weeks, the Lod District Court announced on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, Israel Police appealed against their release from house arrest, following a similar appeal on Tuesday, and cited a new cause of danger presented by Urich: A concrete suspicion of tampering with the investigation. During the hearing later in the afternoon, police asked that their house arrest be for three weeks.
The Qatargate affair, investigated by police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), is probing Qatari ties to figures close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – Urich and Feldstein.
Police argued on Tuesday that Urich remains a threat and should not be released, but Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court Judge Menahem Mizrahi wasn’t convinced. Police appealed to the Lod District Court, leading to Thursday’s decision.
At the hearing on Thursday, Lod District Court Judge Amit Michles said, “I think that there are actions here that could relate to tampering. Without getting into details, based on the demands on this case, house arrest is the most balanced move.” The district court’s decision overturned that of the magistrate’s.
In its appeal, police charged that the magistrate’s court was wrong to assume that the two could be trusted, and ignored the method of communication between them, how they operate, and the acts that are attributed to them.
Michles offered all sides to accept the house arrest appeal for two weeks, until May 8, and see what develops. He added that the debate on the issue was only regarding Feldstein, not Urich.
Feldstein was arrested for leaking confidential documents
Feldstein was arrested in November, along with IDF reservist NCO Ari Rosenfeld, for leaking confidential documents from inside the military to German daily Bild. The documents concerned Hamas’s grasp of how its stance on the hostage negotiations was affecting Israeli society and policy, and were allegedly intended to sway public opinion within Israel about the government’s stance on the matter.
The contents of the documents were originally presented to an Israeli journalist, but they failed publication due to the military censor. To get them published, Israel Einhorn, a former Netanyahu aide who is of interest in the case and is currently residing in Serbia, allegedly facilitated the transfer to Bild.
Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who the government is trying to fire, and the legality of his dismissal is being debated in the High Court of Justice, in his Tuesday affidavit testified that the efforts to fire him began in earnest in November, coinciding with the Feldstein saga.
He argued that the push for his dismissal was not due to the lack of trust between him and the prime minister, which Netanyahu charged began back in 2023, on October 7 – due to the massive failure surrounding Hamas’s massacre attack, and the Shin Bet’s responsibility in it.
In February, reports emerged of Qatari connections to Feldstein and Urich, who both worked closely with the prime minister and allegedly pushed public relations narratives for the Gulf state, in exchange for payment. They supposedly fed information to Israeli journalists, presenting them as coming from security and diplomatic sources, when, in actuality, they came from Qatar.
The point was to boost Qatar’s role as a mediator in the Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations, and to lessen that of Egypt’s, the other main mediator. Qatar denied any such initiative.
Allegedly, the whole operation was carried out by the Third Circle company, headed by American lobbyist Jay Footlik; one of his clients was Qatar. The company allegedly approached Urich, while Feldstein put out requests to Israeli journalists, cementing the connection between Feldstein and Footlik’s company through Urich and Einhorn.
i24 legal correspondent to be interrogated
On Thursday, i24 legal correspondent Avishai Grinzaig reported that Footlik will be interrogated from where he resides in the US within the next two weeks, and that this interrogation is already coordinated with the FBI.
At the hearing on Thursday, police investigators presented new evidence concerning the alleged stream of funds from Doha to the suspects.
When the investigation began, several journalists were invited to testify. The Jerusalem Post Editor-in-Chief Zvika Klein was among them and was later interrogated.
Bini Aschkenasy contributed to this report.
