Was Israel Tricked by a Double Agent?

By Amit Segal

It’s Wednesday, May 14, and Israel is investigating whether it was deceived by a double agent in Gaza prior to the October 7 massacre.

As you may expect, this is not the kind of story with information flowing freely into the public sphere, but I’ll outline what I can.

Who is the suspect? According to Yedioth Ahronoth’s Ronen Bergman, it’s a Shin Bet source who held a mid-level position in Hamas. But rather than provide the Shin Bet with information on Hamas, Israel is concerned that he was working for Hamas all along.

Ok, but what did he actually do? Due to his rank in Hamas, Israel expects that he would have known about the October 7 plans in the hours leading up to it—but in a phone call with the Shin Bet on the night of October 6-7, he explicitly said that Hamas was not preparing for an attack—and that if it was, he would know. That’s according to my Channel 12 colleague Omri Maniv.

How did the suspicion arise? According to Maniv, IDF soldiers arrested him during the current war in Gaza, and took him to Israel for questioning—where he admitted to being a double agent for Hamas.

In fact, the Shin Bet tried to contact two other agents that night. One told them that something is happening in the mosques, but that he isn’t allowed to go near. The second didn’t answer.

And there’s more: This may well have been part of a broader plan to deceive Israel, according to Israel Hayom’s Shachar Kleiman, who cites recent claims by Hamas officials that in 2017, they exposed a large spy network operating for Israel, and subsequently turned some of them into double agents “to gather information about the Shin Bet’s operational methods, the identities of agents it operates, and their equipment.”

The purpose of these double agents? To mislead Israeli intelligence services.

Whether the full story will ever enter the public sphere is anyone’s guess, but either way, let’s hope that Israel can get to the bottom of it.