Israeli television reports Netanyahu authorised a direct Shin Bet channel to Hamas abroad

According to Channel 12’s Thursday evening report, as written up by Ynet, Netanyahu authorised then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar in 2025 to maintain a direct channel with Hamas officials abroad to advance a hostage deal. The Times of Israel’s rendering describes the architecture: a channel between a senior Shin Bet official, acting for Bar, and senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad, approved by Netanyahu and by Khalil Hayya, then a Hamas negotiator. ToI also reports Bar held direct negotiations over hostage releases with exiled Hamas leaders after 7 October through February 2025, when he was removed from the file. Separately, journalist Ben Caspit reported that Netanyahu had operated a covert channel with Hamad during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, with businessman Shlomi Fogel as intermediary, alongside the formal Israeli delegation’s talks in Cairo.

The 2014 strand carries the more colourful detail. Per the television report, Fogel was summoned and told he was breaking the law, then produced “dozens of pages” of documents “with all the records of his meetings… all the messages he had been instructed to convey to Ghazi Hamad.” Security officials, the report says, concluded this was Netanyahu’s modus operandi, likening it to his use of Ronald Lauder as a secret personal emissary to Hafez al-Assad. None of the material retrieved for this desk carries a named on-the-record source, Fogel’s own account, or a response from the Prime Minister’s Office. Israeli newsrooms went quiet on Friday afternoon for Shabbat; the first full print reaction is due Sunday.

Assessment: Hold this at arm’s length. It is a television claim with two strands of different vintage, no named source, and no denial yet — and the line that Fogel “was told he was breaking the law” is a report of what unnamed officials said in 2014, not any legal finding. Its political utility is obvious to everyone involved: an opposition running on Netanyahu’s trustworthiness gains from a story about back channels run around the formal machinery, and a prime minister campaigning on hostage recovery can just as easily claim vindication. The reaction on Sunday will tell you more than the broadcast did.