Just when Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial — featuring cigars, telecom favours, and a Hollywood producer testifying from Brighton — seemed sufficiently baroque, along came 'Qatargate.' Israeli police arrested two of Netanyahu's closest aides, Jonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein, on suspicion of maintaining illicit ties with the Qatari government. The pair were among the prime minister's most senior staffers, raising the bracing possibility that foreign influence had been operating from inside the Israeli Prime Minister's Office itself. Local media, with characteristic understatement, dubbed the affair 'Qatargate.' The arrests added a fresh dimension to Netanyahu's already crowded legal biography, which by this point included charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust across three separate cases — Cases 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 — none of which he had resolved, and none of which he acknowledged as anything other than a coordinated conspiracy. Netanyahu has consistently denied wrongdoing in all matters. His aides' arrests, however, suggest that if there is a conspiracy against him, it has shown impressive penetration of his own inner circle.