Netanyahu Aides Suspected of Role in Ra'am Election Day Arrests, Report Says

People close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are suspected of involvement in the Election Day arrest of three activists from the Ra'am party, according to an investigative report broadcast by N12 on Sunday evening.

The report shed new light on the events leading to the arrests in southern Israel and on the role of Prime Minister's Office officials in passing information to police. It also revealed that Shin Bet Director David Zini asked on Election Day to wiretap five Arab MKs as part of the agency's investigation into suspected foreign interference in the October 27 election.

"These events taught me that there will be no more fair elections here," a senior law enforcement official familiar with the case told N12. "Once the Shin Bet and the police act this way, whether knowingly or as tools, we will not be able to guarantee that the next election will be fair."

The Prime Minister's Office roundly denied the allegations, calling the report "another false report wrapped in dramatic music, as part of the serious attempts to silence the election contamination affair."

According to the report, Netanyahu's chief of staff, Ido Norden, called the police commissioner's office on the Monday before the election with a complaint about Ra'am activists in southern Israel. Norden referred officers to a purported intelligence source who, he said, had relevant information, and a police intelligence coordinator contacted the source that same evening. The source had until recently worked in the Prime Minister's Office and was close to its former director-general, Yossi Shelley. He provided allegedly incriminating information about the three activists that N12 said later turned out to be baseless. The information was entered into police intelligence systems that evening, and police carried out the arrests on Election Day.

The police Investigations Division and the office of Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara are now examining whether the information was planted in advance to bolster the complaint and trigger the arrests, N12 reported.

On Election Day, 14 police officers raided the homes of the three activists. One of those arrested was Dr. Sayaf Abu Riyash, a physician from the Bedouin city of Rahat. In footage obtained by N12's investigative program Uvda, his wife, Miriam, can be heard asking officers whether they have a search warrant. According to the report, the officers had neither a search warrant nor an arrest warrant at the time. Abu Riyash was arrested anyway, along with two other activists. Police later raised suspicions about large sums of money and Ra'am ballots allegedly meant to buy votes, suspicions the report said proved exaggerated. Netanyahu publicized the arrests repeatedly throughout Election Day, and he and Likud cited the case as evidence of an attempt to steal the election. By November 3, six of the seven suspects had been released from custody.

The report also revealed that Zini, who additionally sought to arrest Arab MKs, asked on Election Day to wiretap five of them as part of the foreign interference probe. The Attorney-General's Office rejected the request, and it was later determined there was no real evidence of foreign interference rising to the level of undermining the election's integrity. Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg has said such suspicions do not undermine the election's integrity. N12 also reported on a meeting between Zini and Gadi Eisenkot two days after the election, in which Zini placed a thick binder on the table and said: "There is information here going back to 2018 that the Arabs are stealing the elections in Israel. All the Shin Bet chiefs ignored it. I came, and I lifted that stone."

The conduct described in the report has alarmed senior officials in the Shin Bet and in law enforcement. "The public service will not withstand another period like this; we are on the edge," one of them said this week.

Abu Riyash was held for six days until the Beersheba Magistrate's Court ordered his release. Police claimed "numerous findings" had been found in his home, though the warrantless search turned up nothing, according to the report, and a police representative argued that his being both a doctor and an organizer of campaign gatherings in private homes was "problematic." Police also did not let him vote on the day of his arrest. His wife, who told officers during the raid that she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy, gave birth to a daughter on Friday. The Shin Bet said in response that it investigated serious suspicions of subversion and foreign influence in accordance with its legal authority, and that publications regarding the targets or tools of the investigation are not on its behalf and should be treated accordingly.