Israel Police on Monday morning arrested two suspects as part of the “Qatargate” affair investigation: Yonatan Urich, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s media advisor, and Eli Feldstein, his former military spokesperson.

This is the first time that the police have made an actual arrest in the affair, as opposed to previous times when the suspects were only detained for questioning. A third suspect, a journalist, was detained for questioning on Monday.

Early Monday afternoon, Attorney-General Gali Baharav Miara ordered the police to immediately summon Netanyahu to testify in the case against his aides, Channel 12 News reported. Netanyahu received the summons in the middle of his testimony in his corruption trial in Tel Aviv, and he was forced to abruptly stop the hearing shortly after 1 p.m. to travel to Jerusalem to provide testimony to the police in the Qatargate case.

Netanyahu is not being questioned as a suspect but as someone with possible knowledge of the case. However, depending on the findings of the testimony, it is possible that the prosecution may make a decision later in the case to question Netanyahu under caution [as a suspect].

The investigators will question Netanyahu about his awareness [or not] of his advisors’ ties with Qatari elements and whether he knew about the payments allegedly transferred from Qatar to those involved in the affair, including during the war.

About two weeks ago, Kan New revealed recordings of Israeli businessman Gil Birger, in which he is heard talking about transferring funds from a Qatari lobbyist to Eli Feldstein. Birger said he was asked to transfer the funds for tax considerations and stressed that he is personally familiar with Feldstein.

Feldstein confirmed the matter, and his lawyers said that the money he received from Birger was for strategy and communication services he provided to Netanyahu’s office and not to the Qatari government.

Netanyahu’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, who also represents Urich, left Netanyahu’s court hearing this morning during the Prime Minister’s testimony.

The details of the case have been placed under a gag order, but according to reports, the suspects are suspected of receiving payments from Qatar while managing hostage negotiations.

The Likud party sharply responded to the reports, issuing a statement saying: “The thuggish arrest of Yonatan Urich is a new low in the political witch hunt to topple a prime minister from the right and to prevent the dismissal of the failed Shin Bet chief.”

“After the fabricated investigations initiated by the prosecution and the  Shin Bet chief regarding the forgery of protocols in the Prime Minister’s office and the extortion of an officer in the Prime Minister’s military secretariat that blew up in their faces, they invented another new fabricated affair about Qatar, which will also explode very quickly.”

“The attempt to intimidate Yonatan Urich in order to forcibly extract false testimony against the Prime Minister through blackmail and false arrest is another criminal act by a frightened legal clique.”

“For weeks, the prosecution and the Shin Bet chief have been conducting sham investigations in the dark under a gag order, to try to prevent the dismissal of the Shin Bet chief while using Urich and others as cannon fodder. Their goal is to carry out a coup 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 law clerks.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)