Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s advisor Jonatan Urich recently tried to enter a plea deal in the so-called Bild affair case concerning the leak of intelligence material to a foreign media outlet, but the request was rejected by the offices of the attorney general and state attorney, according to a report Wednesday.

Urich, along with former Netanyahu spokesman Eli Feldstein, is suspected of leaking classified documents to the German tabloid Bild in the summer of 2024, allegedly to sway public Israeli opinion against a hostage deal with Hamas.

In July 2025, the State Attorney’s Office indicated that it would move to charge Urich with security offenses, including transmitting classified information with the intent to harm state security, possession of classified information and destroying evidence.

On Wednesday, Haaretz reported, however, that Urich’s lawyer, Amit Hadad, had recently submitted a plea deal that would have allowed Urich to plead guilty to lesser charges, rather than stand trial on charges of harming state security.

The plea deal, if accepted, would have seen him admit to having been in possession of the classified documents in the wake of the leak rather than to being involved in the leak itself, the report said.

These charges would have ensured he avoided jail time, it noted, and he would have instead been sentenced to community service.

Citing legal sources familiar with the plea deal offer, Haaretz reported that some officials were inclined to accept it, as by admitting to involvement at any level, Urich would be disproving claims, including those made by Netanyahu, that the case was unfounded.

Ultimately, though, the newspaper reported, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Attorney Amit Aisman rejected the plea deal, in part because they felt that the proposed community service sentence was insufficient for the crime Urich would be admitting to if they accepted it.

Additionally, Haaretz noted that the plea deal may have been rejected due to what it said was a “reasonable chance” that Urich could be convicted on the more severe charges.

The Bild affair revolves around the allegedly unlawful removal of sensitive and classified documents from IDF Military Intelligence by a reservist NCO, Ari Rosenfeld, and the leaking of one of those documents to the Bild newspaper by Feldstein, with Urich’s knowledge.

The document in question was an internal Hamas memo purporting to show that the terror group was not interested in the compromises necessary to reach a hostage deal. It was leaked to defend Netanyahu’s position that only further military pressure would lead to the release of the hostages in the face of a severe public backlash to the murder of six hostages in Gaza at the end of August 2024.

Urich, along with Feldstein and ex-Netanyahu campaign adviser Yisrael Einhorn, is also a key suspect in the so-called “Qatargate” affair, in which he is accused of taking money to spearhead a public relations campaign to cast Qatar in a positive light for over a year after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, despite the Gulf state’s backing for the terror group, all while working in the PMO.

Earlier this week, the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court removed almost all restrictive conditions on Urich, allowing him to contact and work with Netanyahu again after being barred from doing so for the past year.

A ban on Urich leaving the country remained in place, and he was still barred from speaking about the investigations with Netanyahu or anyone else connected to the two cases.

Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.

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