Last month the Shin Bet announced that a high-ranking Hamas operative was the head of a Hamas network planning to overthrow the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. But transcripts of the Shin Bet’s interrogation indicate that the operative, Riad Nasser, told Israeli security officials that Hamas’ plan was to wait for the PA to collapse and then fill in the power vacuum, not to actively stage a coup.

After several sessions in the Shin Bet’s interrogation room at the Russian Compound in Jerusalem, where Nasser sat for 51 days, the Hamas official provided details about the Islamist group’s plans in the West Bank.

Nasser began working for Hamas after receiving an order from Salah Arouri, a high-ranking Hamas operative who went to Jordan with the Shin Bet’s agreement in 2010 and had been trying to revive the group since then. Nasser, who is 38 and comes from the West Bank village of Deir Qaddis, went with Arouri to Allenby Bridge, where he received an order to prepare for the day he would be required. He said the days of PA control over the West Bank would soon be ending, and there would ultimately be a vacuum that Hamas wished to fill so as to seize power.

Nasser said this involved making the plans necessary for Hamas to be ready to hold onto power in a stable manner. The long-term vision was to seize Fatah’s place in the West Bank and complete its takeover of Palestinian territory, he said.

At this juncture, the investigator wrote down in the minutes, in Nasser’s name, that this was a “kind of coup, like the one that was done in Gaza in its time,” a reference to the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, two years after Israel’s withdrawal.

But later on, when Nasser elaborated on all the incarnations of the plan, he explained that the goal was to wait until the PA collapsed and then try to act. Contrary to the Shin Bet’s announcement, he did not say Hamas wanted to actively carry out a coup in order to get rid of the PA.

In his interrogation session on June 9, Nasser mentioned “conversations with Salah [Arouri] about the idea of strengthening Hamas so that it would take the place of the PA the day the PA collapsed.”

The investigation, which led to the interrogation of 46 suspects, also revealed that most of the communication with Arouri took place via slips of paper brought to Jordan by a courier, and that the money that financed the preparations also came from Jordan, via a Palestinian who worked there.

“It was believed that it was just a matter of time and that sooner or later, the PA would collapse, and Hamas wanted to move into the vacuum that would be created,” the records show Nasser saying. “We spoke about providing arms and ammunition to the various regions [of the West Bank] and also about bringing in large sums of money to make the takeover of the West Bank areas possible. Salah also mentioned the points on the ground through which the activists would be able to receive money. The purpose of this measure was to set up a power base, not as defense for a military action.”

Dozens of investigators questioned Nasser almost around the clock. The transcripts of those conversations amount to hundreds of pages, far more than the norm.

During his interrogation, Nasser gave precise information about Hamas’ situation in the West Bank: the names of operatives, its political situation, contacts abroad and plans for the future. When the interrogation was completed, at the height of Operation Protective Edge, the Shin Bet security service announced that it had prevented a Hamas network from continuing to build the infrastructure needed to carry out a coup in the West Bank, in which Hamas would overthrow the Palestinian Authority and take over in its stead.

Nasser, the security service said, had been Hamas’ head of infrastructure in the West Bank. The discovery, announced mid-August, of about 600,000 shekels ($171,000) and arms and ammunition worth an estimated several million shekels, including seven rocket launchers and 24 rifles, was packaged for the public as part of the security cabinet’s decision to eradicate Hamas infrastructure — even though the operation began in May, about two months before the Gaza war.

Nasser was arrested and released several times in the past, in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. During his interrogation, he said he was a member of the Islamist Hamas “for religious reasons.” In December 2013 he was placed under administrative detention. On the afternoon of May 27, he was transferred to the Russian Compound in the wake of new information about him.

Over the first few days of his interrogation, Nasser denied any connection with forbidden military activity. The Shin Bet interrogators tried every trick. Some of them tried to get him to like them. When one spoke with him about the traffic accidents in the Palestinian Authority, Nasser agreed with him that people drove wildly. The interrogator played him a recording of the Arik Einstein song “Drive Slowly” and translated the lyrics for him. Another interrogator, known as Fuad, told him that he was “flattered to be interrogating a man so high up in the organization.”

Some of the investigators took an aggressive line, accusing him of being a liar and bringing disgrace to the organization. One interrogator, known as Shimon, told him about Emmanuel Moreno, a highly admired elite Israeli soldier who died in the Second Lebanon War in 2006. “Moreno stood at the head of his fighting men,” Shimon told Nasser. “You’re not like Moreno. You don’t take responsibility for your people.”

Large portions of the conversations were devoted to politics, to pass the time until Nasser began giving his interrogators the details they really wanted to hear. They spoke about Reuven Rivlin’s election as president and the situation on the Temple Mount. One Shin Bet investigator said, “The Middle East is in an unstable situation, and any terror attack or conflict on the Temple Mount could set the region ablaze.” Nasser replied, “A Jewish rabbi said that the Shin Bet is the reason for the problems between Jews and Muslims at Al-Aqsa.” About the future of the conflict, he said, “The solution is a 30-year hudna [truce], but that is not happening because Israel is not interested.” The investigator said Israel was interested, but the Palestinians refused.