Last month, Benjamin Netanyahu announced his choice of Yossi Cohen—the sitting national-security adviser and a former deputy chief of the Mossad—as that organization’s new head. It was in many ways a natural choice. However, writes Haviv Rettig Gur, the way Cohen came to the position, and the fanfare around the unprecedentedly public announcement of his appointment, must be seen as products of Israeli party politics, the current state of Israeli public opinion, and the prime minister’s consequent effort to reshape the executive branch:
The Mossad has long served as a kind of subterranean foreign service, taking on diplomatic work too sensitive to risk handing to the official (and by reputation, leaky) diplomatic corps. . . . With many of Israel’s diplomatic relationships heavily focused on national-security concerns, the Mossad’s channels to foreign governments and espionage services often carry the lion’s share of the most important, urgent, and sensitive communications produced by the highest echelons of government.
Under Netanyahu, this role is growing. The Mossad is effectively replacing the Foreign Ministry as a policy-planning and diplomatic agency—at least for those relationships or issues that matter most: the Iranian nuclear portfolio, the relationship with the highest echelons in Washington and major European capitals, and coordination with Arab governments.
The reason goes beyond the simple fact that the Mossad is one of the few agencies of government that—again, at least by reputation—can keep a secret. The Mossad’s larger advantage for Netanyahu is that it lies deep within the purview of the Prime Minister’s Office, and operates under his authority alone.
In Israel’s party-list coalition system, where the foreign minister is almost necessarily a direct political competitor to the prime minister either from within the ruling party or as head of [another party within the coalition], and thus has a fundamental political interest in clashing with the prime minister, the Mossad constitutes a tantalizing second option: a direct, quiet means for conducting foreign policy without the chaos and gamesmanship introduced by coalition politics.
Read more on Times of Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com/our-new-spymaster-and-the-demise-of-israeli-politics/