CNN
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Israeli police have arrested a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for leaking classified information to foreign media.

Opposition leaders say the intelligence was “faked” and part of a ruse to thwart a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza.

The investigation focuses on allegations that the prime minister’s office promoted to foreign media the claim that Hamas planned to smuggle hostages from Gaza across the Egyptian border and create divisions in Israeli society to pressure Netanyahu into a hostage release and a ceasefire.

Eliezer Feldstein, who has been named by opposition politicians as an aide to Netanyahu, is among several people being questioned for leaking “classified and sensitive intelligence information,” court documents show. A court order made public on Sunday said information extracted from Israeli military systems and “illegally issued” may have damaged Israel’s ability to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

CNN is attempting to reach Feldstein for comment.

A spokesperson for Netanyahu denied that there have been leaks from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and that the “person in question has never participated in security-related discussions,” apparently referring to Feldstein.

The PMO also downplayed the possibility that the leak affected negotiations with Hamas over the release of hostages from Gaza, calling the claim “ridiculous.”

Opposition leader Yair Lapid on Sunday accused the prime minister’s office of leaking “forged secret documents to torpedo the possibility of a hostage deal – to shape an operation to influence public opinion against the hostages’ families.”

Families of hostages held in Gaza have accused Netanyahu of repeatedly thwarting a deal with Hamas, believing that an end to the war in Gaza would force the prime minister to hold elections. Netanyahu is said to have torpedoed agreements with 11th hour demands in the past – something he denies.

The alleged leaks formed the basis of two articles published in September, one in the United Kingdom’s Jewish Chronicle and another in Germany’s Bild, both citing Israeli intelligence sources and supporting a narrative pushed by Netanyahu at the time.

The articles were published while negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of hostages were still ongoing, but also as thousands of Israelis demonstrated almost daily, calling on the government to make a deal with Hamas and bring Israeli hostages home.

These demonstrations intensified after the Israeli military announced on September 1 that six Israelis had been killed in Gaza – four of whom would be released in a first wave of the possible deal.

The next day, Netanyahu held a press conference and presented an alleged Hamas document that he said was found in a tunnel in Gaza. The document, he said, showed that Hamas was trying to divide Israelis. “I am not going to give in to this pressure,” Netanyahu said, repeating his demand that Israel control the Gaza-Egypt border, also known as the Philadelphia corridor. Doing so would “prevent the smuggling of our hostages into Sinai,” he said. “They could show up in Iran or Yemen.”

Just days later, Jewish Chronicle published an article claiming that intelligence sources said: “Sinwar’s plan was to smuggle himself and remaining Hamas leaders along with Israeli hostages through the Philadelphi corridor to Sinai and from there to Iran. ”

The article said the information was gathered “during the interrogation of a captured senior Hamas official, as well as through information obtained from documents seized on Thursday, August 29, the day the six bodies of the murdered hostages were recovered.” It has since been removed, but an archived version is still available.

The prime minister’s son, Yair Netanyahu, promoted the article on his social media.

At a press conference on September 10, Israeli army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a reporter: “I don’t know what kind of information you mentioned about Sinwar and the hostages in Philadelphia.”

During the same period, an article in the German newspaper Bild said that a referenced Hamas document written by Yahya Sinwar allegedly showed how the group continued the war and sought to sow division within Israel and put pressure on the families of would exercise the hostages. ‘families, so that they in turn could put pressure on the government. Citing an intelligence document, Bild repeated the claims Netanyahu made during his September 2 press conference.

In a statement on September 8, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said that the document cited by Bild was not written by Sinwar and that it was an old document found five months ago and “written as a recommendation by middle managers within Hamas and not by Sinwar .”

The information did not constitute “new information,” the IDF said, adding that it had been “presented to decision-makers several times, even before the document in question was located.” The statement added that it is investigating the leak of the document, which “constitutes a serious criminal offense.”

Following the court’s lifting of a silence order on Sunday, families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza pointed their fingers at the prime minister’s office, saying that “suspicions indicate that people linked to the prime minister acted to… of the greatest deceptions in history. of the country.”

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz – who left Netanyahu’s war cabinet earlier this year – have seized on the alleged leaks as a failure at the top of the government, with Gantz calling it a “national crime.”

Both have blamed Netanyahu’s office for the leak, with Gantz accusing Netanyahu of using the leaks for political gain. Lapid also questioned whether the leak had been intentional, as hostage negotiations with Hamas collapsed earlier this year, according to a joint statement from the two opposition leaders on Sunday.

“It is suspected that Netanyahu’s team published classified documents and falsified secret documents to torpedo the possibility of a hostage situation,” Lapid said in a statement. “This affair arose from the Prime Minister’s own office, and the investigation must investigate whether this was not on the Prime Minister’s orders.”

Dana Karni and Mike Schwartz contributed to this report.