Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen may start a new political party if the Knesset is on its way to elections, The Jerusalem Post understands.
A final decision will only be made once new elections are a fact, but after multiple rounds of being solicited by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, likely prime ministerial candidate and former prime minister Naftali Bennett, and Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman, Cohen’s leaning is to chart his own course.
Though in the more distant past, Netanyahu had named Cohen as his potential successor in the Likud, given Cohen’s broadly right-wing ideology, the former Mossad chief has broken with Netanyahu on a number of issues over the past two years, including the judicial overhaul and the unwillingness to end the war to achieve the return of more hostages at an earlier date.
In July 2024, the Post independently confirmed that Cohen had decided not to enter politics at that time, though many political officials thought that elections might be on the horizon.
Channel 12 first reported the news, which came after speculation that has gone on and off since Cohen retired as Mossad chief in mid-2021. It also put out a report over the weekend that Cohen was once again seriously examining entering politics for the first time in a year.
Former Mossad head Yossi Cohen is seen speaking at the Jerusalem Post annual conference at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, on October 12, 2021. (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Who is Yossi Cohen?
Cohen has been either the best-known or among the best-known Mossad chiefs in history due to his role in the agency’s heist of Iran’s nuclear archives in 2018, reports of the Mossad’s sensational destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities in 2020-2021, and his role in the Abraham Accords in 2020, much of which were unusually made public.Until Cohen’s term, the Mossad tended to carry out its intelligence and spying activities more in the shadows.
But Cohen and Netanyahu decided that there were strategic benefits to publicizing the heist of Iran’s nuclear archives – and the Abraham Accords themselves were an unusually public stage for the Mossad.After October 7, Cohen also had a hand, briefly, in hostage negotiations with Qatar and held many high-profile meetings with hostage families and a large volume of media interviews.
However, despite months of speculation in 2024, once he decided an election was unlikely, Cohen, being more a man of action than a man who enjoys waiting, decided to reduce his public and media profile.Cohen extended his contract as director of Israel operations at SoftBank, which primarily invests in companies operating in the technology, energy, and financial sectors, and which has close ties to the Saudis.
Previously, polls in 2024 had shown that if Cohen joined a party with Liberman or Bennett, he and some combination of those other leaders could become a powerhouse in the next Knesset.
However, after years in the shadows, Cohen enjoyed being chief of the Mossad and is more interested in being a party leader in order to: have a chance to eventually run for prime minister, to build his own independent constituency and source of political power, and to have the freedom to chart his political course as he sees fit, without having to defer to some other party leader.
“While Netanyahu delivers the Right but no change, and Yair Golan, Yair Lapid, and Benny Gantz offer change but no Right, Cohen may fill that gap in the political map,” a source explained to N12 news.
In an interview with Yonit Levi and Jonathan Freedland on the Unholy podcast, Cohen stated: “I don’t think this is the time to discuss changing the government, but I do believe that after the war there needs to be a big change here.”He continued: “One of the inevitable outcomes of this war is that many of the figures involved, some of whom have already taken responsibility, will be replaced. Politicians need to understand that we’re taking a major step toward change in the Israeli arena from here on out. And yes, that includes elections.”
Born in 1961 – he emphatically tells those close to him that he celebrates his Hebrew birthday year, not his secular one – in Jerusalem to a family with a strong rabbinic background, he enlisted in the IDF’s elite paratroopers’ unit in 1979.
Nicknamed “the model” for his posh dress and attention to his handsome appearance, a little-known detail about Cohen is that he works out hard and can be caught in a polo shirt and shorts in his spacious and very modern, though relatively normal-sized, home in Modiin.
Cohen joined the Mossad in 1982, filling a number of positions in recruiting spies and some top posts in Europe, eventually becoming the agency’s deputy chief, and then Netanyahu’s national security council chief in 2013.Netanyahu appointed Cohen Mossad chief in January 2016, and he served until June 2021.
Cohen was the first leader of the Mossad who was raised religious, though over the years he eventually stopped wearing a kippah and now identifies more as a traditional Jew than as Orthodox.
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