PM said to secretly meet ex-Mossad official working for Qatar at height of Gaza war

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly met secretly with the most senior Israeli on Qatar’s payroll months after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion, during the thick of the Gaza war.

Channel 12 news reported Sunday that the Israeli man, identified only by his first Hebrew initial, “Shin,” and nicknamed “the prince of the Mossad,” was a top official in the spy agency before retiring and working for Qatar’s influence campaign in Israel.

During the meeting, which allegedly took place in the summer of 2024, Shin asked Netanyahu to rein in several Likud ministers — Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, Economy Minister Nir Barkat and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer — who had been publicly attacking Qatar, the network reported.

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The meeting between Netanyahu and the ex-Mossad official was kept secret from others, including then-Mossad director David Barnea, according to Channel 12, and it did not appear in any official protocols.

Qatar has long hosted Hamas’s senior leadership, and in September 2025 the IDF carried out a strike in Doha which sought to assassinate a number of top Hamas officials, but failed to do so.

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Shin had previously arranged a meeting between top Netanyahu aides Yisrael Einhorn and Jonathan Urich and senior Qatari diplomat Ali al-Thawadi, a confidante of Qatar’s emir, according to the report. Einhorn and Urich are both suspects in the Qatargate affair, accused of conducting public relations work for Qatar while they were employed by the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as in the Bild leaked documents affair.

Police investigators from the Lahav 443 major crimes unit reportedly interrogated Urich about setting up the meeting between Netanyahu and Shin. Urich told investigators that he did not remember any such request, and that Shin did not need him in order to reach the prime minister. Channel 12 reported earlier this month that a police interrogator said Shin was the one who told them that there had been two meetings between Urich and Thawadi in the summer of 2024.

Thawadi held the “Israel portfolio” during Israel’s two-year war with Hamas in Gaza, and was Qatar’s point man during hostage negotiations. In that role, he met several times with his Israeli counterpart Ron Dermer. He has served since January 2026 as Qatar’s representative on the US-backed Gaza Executive Board.

Netanyahu was questioned in March 2025 for two hours by police about Urich’s involvement in Qatargate and a second scandal, the passing of classified information to the German Bild outlet, in which Urich was also implicated.

Urich was investigated about Shin in May, and police have sought since then to bring Netanyahu back for a second round of questioning. He has not agreed, Channel 12 reported on Sunday. Netanyahu himself is not a suspect in the Qatargate and classified documents cases, but they have been major issues in the campaign ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Despite Urich having apparently met at least twice with Thawadi, one of the most powerful men in Qatar, Channel 12 asserted earlier this month that Netanyahu alleged in his own testimony that Urich had never approached him about Qatar or updated him about his business meetings and dealings with Qatari officials.

Channel 12 also reported Sunday that Urich was paid NIS 1.9 million (over $500,000 at 2024 exchange rates and some $600,000 at current rates) between January and September 2024 for what police suspect was work on the pro-Qatar influence campaign.

The report asserted that the money was transferred to Urich by Yisrael Einhorn. Israel Police in January declared the Serbia-based Einhorn a “fugitive criminal” and said there was an arrest warrant out for him.

According to a Channel 12 report last week, Urich has admitted to investigators that he received “hundreds of thousands of shekels” from Qatar, and that he had no moral qualms working for Doha both before and after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre.

In response to the reports on Sunday, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the opposition B’Yachad party, demanded the prime minister “explain to the public his connection to Qatar, why he advanced Qatar’s interests in wartime, and why the person closest to him, even now, is a Qatari agent who carried out the gravest act of treason in the history of the state.”

The answers to all those questions, which Netanyahu “is trying to hide,” Bennett vowed, will be uncovered “in the state commission of inquiry that we will establish” following Tuesday’s election.

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