Brother of Israel's Shin Bet chief indicted for 'assisting enemy in wartime'

Jerusalem: Prosecutors on Thursday filed charges against the brother of the head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency for offences including “assisting the enemy in wartime”, over the alleged smuggling of cigarettes into besieged Gaza.

Israel controls the entry of all goods and people into the Palestinian territory, where humanitarian conditions remain dire despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas which came into effect on October 10.

Bezalel Zini, the brother of Shin Bet chief David Zini, is charged along with other defendants with “assisting the enemy in wartime, performing transactions in property for terrorist purposes, obtaining something by fraud under aggravated circumstances, and taking bribes”, the justice ministry said.

“A central category of prohibited goods smuggled into the Strip was tobacco and cigarettes, which have put a total of hundreds of millions of shekels into Hamas’s coffers since the start of the war,” the ministry added in a statement.

Bezalel Zini, a reservist in the Israeli military, is suspected of smuggling approximately 14 cartons of cigarettes into Gaza on three occasions, for which he received 365,000 shekels (around $117,400).

Two other defendants were indicted along with Zini on Thursday.

The smuggling was carried out “by misleading soldiers at the crossings into the Strip, and by presenting a false situation as if the defendants were entering as part of their military service for security purposes”, the statement added.

It forms part of a wider smuggling network which the justice ministry described as a “serious case of organised, systematic, and sophisticated smuggling of various goods into the Gaza Strip for profit”, which began in the summer of 2025, when war was still raging in Gaza.

Prosecutors on Wednesday filed charges against 12 individuals and a company in connection with the case.

A justice ministry statement on Wednesday said the smuggled goods were worth millions of shekels and included cartons of cigarettes, iPhones, batteries, car parts and more.