Rivers of ink have been spilled on Israeli intelligence in the last year: myths and legends, successes but above all bloodthirsty flop, practically everything has been said. Yet, there remain countless grey areas, in particular Mossad, in this never-ending war against the terrorism of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the role, with related nuclear threat, of Iran. Little or nothing, in fact, has been written about thatintelligence diplomacy, the intelligence diplomacy that, for months, has seen the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, as well as the CIA's William J. Burns and the lesser-known counterparts of the Mukhabarat Arabs, to shuttle between Jerusalem, Doha and Cairo for meetings, not even all that secret, in order to agree on a truce between Israel, precisely, and its most bitter enemies of the moment, Hamas first and foremost.
In the background, the fate of the Israeli prisoners still in the hands of Hamas, the fifty or so, perhaps still alive and, it is said, brought to safety in Egypt by the latter or about to be, through the tunnels still existing in Gaza. At least, this is what was written in articles that appeared in the Londoner Jewish Chronicle (then to deny it)1 and the German BILD, using classified information, specific to a Jewish military document, violated and leaked, already in September, by Eliezer Feldstein2, the apparently unfaithful spokesman and official of Netanyahu's war cabinet, with at least three other individuals with ties to the Jewish military and security establishment.
But now Netanyahu is in the crosshairs, on whom yet another accusation has fallen, that of having favored Feldstein's tip-off in order to torpedo an agreement for the return of the hostages and to prolong the war in Gaza, and thus demonstrate, once again, his mantra, that is, the bad faith of Hamas, the negotiations as psychological warfare imposed by terrorists and the need to continue the conflict in order to secure, with lasting control, the Philadelphia corridor along the border between Gaza and Egypt. In short, a manipulation of Jewish public opinion to the exclusive advantage of the prime minister. Also for these reasons, the tip-off was not welcomed by the leaders, precisely, of Jewish intelligence, who decided to get to the bottom of the matter. Hence the start of the BibiLeaks, yet another chapter in this long war of Israel, its prime minister, the entire intelligence community and its people, who have been demanding the return to Israel of their kidnapped relatives since October 7, 2023.
The entire Israeli-Palestinian affair has always highlighted the crucial role of intelligence, on both sides: Only with information on people, names, internal accomplices, organizational charts, logistics and everything that revolves around the world of security of a country or a community, is it possible to face the terrorist or military threat to one's existence. However, Israel has invested all its energies in intelligence, considering the military and security components as dominant factors even in the decision-making process, to the point of eclipsing the contribution of traditional diplomacy in a way that has no equal in the modern world. All this stems from that constant perception of threat and encirclement from nearby enemies that pervades the Jewish security culture and, consequently, domestic public opinion.
To address this issue, and since 1948, Israeli leaders have forged a three-dimensional strategy. First, they have sought to ensure Israel's military primacy over all its enemies, near and far. Second, they have maintained close ties with Western powers, especially those that have a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, such as the United States, with the predictable advantages in the event of a vote. Finally, and most evident today, they have invested heavily in the creation of an informal diplomatic network, alongside the traditional one, capable of breaking Israeli isolation. In addition, all intelligence agencies, without exception, have played key roles in the implementation of this strategic doctrine. And this has always happened for Israel, regardless of Hamas or Hezbollah. And it is in this doctrinal context that the preponderantintelligence diplomacy.
The use ofintelligence diplomacy It is not, however, exclusively Jewish nor is it of recent invention.: in fact, governments use it when the nature of the interlocutor, the relationships, the issues, the moment or the political context, or all these factors together, make the use of intelligence actors and relations attractive and advantageous; or even just when influence and persuasion, based on actual knowledge of facts, are essential to obtain political results with evanescent interlocutors, such as the leaders of armed and/or terrorist organizations/factions. The English intelligence services, as well as the KGB first and the Russian FSB and SVR later, and the CIA itself, in the most complex modern scenarios, have made extensive use of it3, although not publicly as is now the case with Israel. Furthermore, and probably, no other state in the world uses its intelligence agencies to pursue its diplomatic agenda to the same extent as the Jewish state.
In practice, Israel and intelligence diplomacy, which it has been using for months in the war in Gaza, but for several years for the Abraham Accords (with the then head of the Mossad(Yossi Cohen)4, have made it clear that, in the most modern world relations, it has become necessary to overcome the conviction, typical of the liberal states of the twentieth century, according to which the antidotes to secret intelligence, the dangerous one of provocateurs and double-crossers, were only transparent diplomacy and supranational institutions. Transparency, in fact, alone would no longer guarantee international stability and Dialogue and policy forums, such as the United Nations, have proven impotent in the face of the aggression of armed protagonists, such as non-state actors, such as ISIS, first, and now Hamas and Hezbollah.
It resulted in not only the Mossad, but also the 'Safe, Israeli military intelligence, and the IDF's foreign relations department have long assumed an increasing role in the diplomatic environment, so much so that they even speak openly of military diplomacy, military diplomacy5. An oxymoron? Perhaps. Apparently, and certainly not for Israel. Certainly an epochal challenge, given that Israel is a small country with people culturally averse to diplomacy, where the "lone ranger" mentality dominates, dating back to the biblical description of "a nation that dwells alone"6.
The tumultuous history of this country has also seen multiple instances of military diplomacy playing a vital role and saving the day since its inception. Military capacity building operations were crucial for the nascent army, necessitating creative and dogged diplomatic efforts.
Two of many examples are the 1948 Czechoslovak arms shipments to circumvent the UN arms embargo, which enabled the newly created IDF to repel invading Arab armies; as well as theOperation Nickel Grass, the American strategic airlift to replenish Israel's resources during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which may have had limited practical impact but sent a powerful signal in convincing the Egyptian leadership that the chapter on wars had to be closed.
Originally entrusted entirely to theSafe, international coordination among the Israeli military is now shared with a separate IDF division focused on diplomacy and cooperation. While each IDF service branch has its own foreign relations unit, the International Cooperation Division (ICD) oversees international cooperation across the IDF and guides staff-level relationships, from managing the complexities of cross-border cooperation, through working shoulder-to-shoulder with strategic allies, to engaging with key players (e.g., Russia in Syria). Aligning all military diplomacy efforts under the operational sphere, rather than just intelligence, has proven to be a profound transformation. While the ICD resides in the new Directorate of Strategic Planning and Cooperation (J5), during contingencies is subordinate to the operational branch (J3). This means that Jewish military diplomacy is now concerned with operational planning and execution, with all the latitude of maneuver that this entails..
It follows that, if the objectives of intelligence are generally perceived as information gathering and analysis activities to facilitate the choices of political decision makers on strategic objectives to promote and internal and external threats to counter, both theintelligence diplomacy that the military diplomacy Jewish are instead now revealing themselves as powerful foreign policy tool, useful in specific circumstances, such as in this war, to support conventional diplomacy, which fades into the background until it disappears altogether, and thus to create thinner and more exclusive lines of communication.
In practice, the involvement of intelligence in the diplomatic sphere allows its officers to navigate very difficult terrain, where traditional diplomatic contact may require formal recognition, with the risk of running aground in a very long time. This is particularly significant when there is no normal open diplomatic relationship between the interlocutors, as in the case of an Israel not recognized as a state entity by Hamas & co., as happens to the latter by Israel. Not least, by resorting to intelligence diplomacy it is possible to avoid certain disadvantageous aspects of real diplomacy, the open one, such as the “public effect”, in which the actions of negotiators are influenced by the way in which the negotiation process proceeds and by the pressure of public opinion. In practice, what Netanyahu is now accused of having wanted to manipulate with a targeted tip-off; yet another setback (all internal) to its own intelligence, already in the crosshairs for the events of October 7th.
One wonders, then, if theintelligence , military diplomacy, as they will emerge forged after the facts Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah can be considered substitutes for the most typical diplomacy. Questions imposed by the manifest impotence of a traditional diplomacy and above all by the proven absence of the preventive one, now alien to the practice for the resolution of conflicts born from the most advanced challenges, latent for some years but clearly exploded with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia first and then with the cowardly terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, and now typical of a world disorder still in a desperate search for its evolution towards its own center of gravity, settled, stable and lasting. Certainly a new path has been opened to diplomatic practice which we will all have to take into account, with civil and military intelligence as almost absolute protagonists.. An inevitable consequence of the era of mass information and new forms of conflict, asymmetric and hybrid, alongside the proliferation of non-state armed entities as threats to democracy and peaceful civil life.
6 Balaam, Pentateuch, Numbers 39:9
Photo: IDF/UN
