The Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday rejected a request by the State Attorney’s Office to bar Jonatan Urich, a close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from contact with the prime minister following his indictment in the Bild leaked document affair earlier this month.

Judge Ala Masarwa noted that Urich had contact with Netanyahu during the most sensitive periods of the investigation into the affair, and said it is therefore highly problematic to demand at the current stage that Urich be banned from the Prime Minister’s Office and from contact with the prime minister.

“As time goes by, the danger [of obstruction of justice] decreases, especially when nearly two years have passed since the events,” Masarwa wrote.

The ruling means that Urich can now return to work with Netanyahu.

Urich was indicted on June 11 on a charge of transmitting classified information with the intent to harm state security, over his involvement in leaking classified documents to the press. The charge relates to Urich’s role in the leak of a classified document from IDF military intelligence to the Bild newspaper in September 2024, apparently as part of an effort to buttress Netanyahu’s claim that it was Hamas, not the prime minister, that was holding up a deal for the release of hostages held in Gaza.

The document — an internal Hamas memo obtained by IDF intelligence that ostensibly suggested the terror group was not interested in a hostage deal — was........

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