Israeli spy Eli Cohen in Syria in the 1960s. (Israel’s Prime Minister Office)
Syria’s Islamist-led Interim Government approved the handover of the belongings of long-dead Mossad spy Eli Cohen to Israel as a gesture of goodwill to United States President Donald Trump, Reuters reported on May 20, citing three sources.
The Office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on May 18, the 60th anniversary of Cohen’s public execution in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that the Mossad had acquired the entirety of the Syrian intelligence archive in what it described as a “covert operation.”
The archive included some 2,000 documents related to Cohen, including handwritten letters from the spy to his family, proof of communications between him and senior Syrian officials, photos taken during his years undercover in the country.
Born in Egypt to a Jewish family, Cohen joined the Mossad in the early 1960s and infiltrated the top echelons of Syria’s political leadership under the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet.
Israel claims that the intelligence obtained by him over four years of undercover operations in Syria played a key role in Israel’s success in the 1967 Six Day War, particularly in the occupation of the Golan Heights.
The spy was eventually captured by Syrian intelligence, reportedly with direct technical help from the Soviets. He was tried and executed in Damascus for espionage on May 18 of 1965. Syria refused to return his body, which remains missing to this day.
A Syrian security source, an adviser to Syrian Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and a person familiar with backchannel talks between the countries told Reuters that the Cohen archive was offered to Israel as an indirect gesture by Sharaa as he seeks to cool tensions and build Trump’s confidence.
Syrian rebels found the archive in a state security building after taking over Damascus last December, according to the Syrian security source, who said that Sharaa and his foreign advisers quickly decided to use the material as leverage.
The source added that the Syrian president had realized that the Cohen archive was important to the Israelis and that its return could amount to a significant diplomatic gesture.
Israel launched a military operation in Syria right after the fall of the Assad regime on December 8, occupying the buffer zone adjacent to the Golan and destroying nearly all of the country’s military capabilities. This was apparently enough to intimidate Sharaa.
A separate report released by Reuters earlier this month revealed that the United Arab Emirates had set up a backchannel for talks between Israel and Syria that included efforts to build confidence between the sides.
There have also been other indirect channels for talks between the two countries, according to two people familiar with the matter.
In the talks, Syria agreed to measures including returning the remains of Cohen as well as three Israeli soldiers killed while fighting Syrian forces in Lebanon in the early 1980s, a person familiar with those talks said. The body of one of those soldiers, Sergeant First Class Zvi Feldman, has already been returned, as Israel announced on May 11, although it said at the time that the remains were recovered by the military and the Mossad in a “special operation”.
The return of the Cohen archive came in the context of those confidence-building measures and was done with Sharaa’s direct approval, Reuters quotes the person as saying.
It’s worth noting that Sharaa met with Trump in the Saudi capital, Riyah, on May 14. During the meeting, which was the first between the leaders of the two countries in some 25 years, Trump announced that the U.S. will be ending sanctions against Syria. He also called on Sahraa to make peace with Israel.
A recent report by Channel 12 said that Israel views Trump’s lifting of sanctions on Syria as favorably, albeit while maintaining a high level of caution towards Sharaa.
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this isn’t a government, this is hordes of crazy slaughterers. i hope israeli druze ghassan alian bombs them to hell.
yes wahhabis are worse than animals, so are zionists. expecting one group of subhumans to kill the other group of subhumans is not a solution. the solution is to exterminate both
i hope rami makhlouf will be able to seize an even larger part of syria from hts than ghassan alian previously did
goodwill gesture to people who steal syrian land. arabs are hopeless
as a payment, idf commander ghassan alian should take sweida and damascus from syria so that the arabs will see that jolani and hts are even more stupid than the ass and the hello kitties. although the average german clover is smarter than all of them combined.
shlomo brags about masterminding a “covert operation” when all that happened is zio whore puppet jewlani was dropping his trousers, bending over and begging to do more favours for his j masters.