Spies Versus Statesmen: Israel’s Perpetual Struggle with Strategic Restraint

The recent Israeli airstrike in Qatar exposes historic tensions between the Jewish state’s political leadership and its intelligence agencies.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (R) with Defence Minister Moshe Dayan during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Last week, the Israeli air force launched an audacious missile strike on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar with the ostensible goal of decapitating the militant Palestinian group’s leadership. Yet, the operation failed to kill key figures, including Hamas’s chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya.

More than its tactical failure, the strike unravelled the discord within Israel’s security establishment. If reports are to be believed, Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence service, had refused to conduct the ground assassination operation which was ordered directly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mossad director David Barnea allegedly feared the move could burn a vital mediation channel with Qatar and endanger negotiations with Hamas leaders over the freeing of Israeli hostages.

This clash between Israel’s political leadership and its intelligence establishment is hardly new.

Since its birth in 1948, the Jewish state has been shaped by tensions between the two. Its approach to security has been haunted by a persistent dilemma: when to use force, and when to exercise restraint. Key episodes in the past reveal how these tensions have alternately produced strategic gains, humiliating setbacks and long-term dilemmas.

The Lavon Affair

One of the earliest and most instructive cases of this dynamic was the Lavon Affair of the 1950s. In 1954, the Israeli military intelligence apparatus launched ‘Operation Susannah,’ a covert effort to bomb Western cultural targets in Egypt and pin the blame on local nationalists. The objective was to destabilise Nasser’s regime and forestall any rapprochement with the West.

Pinhas Lavon, then Defence Minister, authorised the operation without full coordination with Mossad, which was wary of the operation’s risks and legality. The mission backfired spectacularly as several operatives were arrested, leading to a diplomatic scandal that almost derailed Israel’s relations with the United States and Britain. The affair exposed deep fissures between political leaders and the intelligence establishment, leading to Lavon’s resignation and a protracted institutional crisis.

Israeli Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon (L) and IDF Chief of the General Staff Moshe Dayan with Shimon Peres (background) in 1953.

Yom Kippur War

Perhaps the most consequential case of the friction between Israel’s political and intelligence establishments occurred during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In the weeks leading up to it, Aman (Israel’s military intelligence) and Mossad repeatedly warned that Egypt and Syria were preparing a coordinated attack. Yet Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan largely dismissed the intelligence as exaggerated or politically motivated.

Meir, fearful of appearing alarmist to the international community, especially the United States on whose support Israel heavily relied upon, was reluctant to mobilise the army pre-emptively and provoke diplomatic backlash. Dayan, influenced by a sense of strategic overconfidence in Israel’s qualitative military edge, regarded the warnings as an attempt by the intelligence establishment to push for mobilisation without sufficient proof.

An even murkier dimension was added by the Egyptian spy Ashraf Marwan, Gen. Nasser’s son-in-law who became a close aide to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who became one of Mossad’s most prized assets. For years, Marwan (who was given the codename ‘Angel’) provided Israel with intelligence that seemed invaluable like details of Egyptian military deployments, political manoeuvres and strategic intentions. Yet some have argued that his signals were often ambiguous: sometimes accurate, at other times deliberately misleading. While Mossad regarded him as their prime source inside the Egyptian regime, suspicions have lingered since his mysterious death in London in 2007.

Some historians, notably Ahron Bregman, have argued that Marwan was in fact a double agent, feeding carefully calibrated disinformation to entrap Israel.

Whatever the truth, Israel was caught off-guard when Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated assault across the Suez Canal and the Golan Heights on October 6, 1973. The initial phase of the war saw devastating Israeli losses, shaking the country’s self-image of military invincibility.

There was public recrimination between Meir’s government and intelligence officials. Chief of Aman, Eli Zeira and Mossad director Zvi Zamir were criticized heavily in the Agranat Commission, with blame assigned for failing to act decisively on warnings. While Israel’s political leaders essentially blamed the intelligence for the surprise attack, intelligence chiefs argued that political hesitancy had prevented preventive measures.

The 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut tragedy highlighted the dangers of Israeli political overreach and limited intelligence supervision. It remains one of the darkest episodes of Israel’s engagement in Lebanon. Following the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, Phalangist militias (Christian Lebanese forces allied with Israel) entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, butchering hundreds of civilians.

The aftermath of the massacre ignited a significant political and institutional crisis in Israel, revealing deep fractures between the political leadership and the intelligence community. While the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were directly involved in facilitating the Phalangist militia's entry into the camps, the intelligence agencies were implicated in the broader context of oversight and accountability.

The Kahan Commission, established to investigate the events, found that Israeli intelligence agencies had prior knowledge of the Phalangists’ intentions and the volatile situation in the camps. However, the Commission concluded that the intelligence community did not adequately communicate the potential risks to political leaders or take proactive measures to prevent the massacre. The aftermath saw political leaders, notably then Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon come under intense public and international criticism.

The Commission’s report held Sharon personally responsible for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge, recommending his dismissal. It also recommended the dismissal of Director of Military Intelligence Yehoshua Saguy and the promotion freeze of Division Commander Brig. Gen. Amos Yaron for at least three years.

Reckless Adventurism

Mossad’s tradition of precision and careful planning was severely tested in 1997 in the attempted assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Amman, Jordan. The operation, authorised at the highest political levels by Prime Minister Netanyahu (then serving his first term), was conceived in the belief that eliminating Mashal would decisively weaken Hamas’s leadership at a critical juncture. Mossad agents injected a lethal toxin into Mashal’s ear, only to be caught by Jordanian security forces. The fallout was catastrophic. King Hussein of Jordan demanded Israel publicly disclose the operation’s details and provide the antidote to save Mashal’s life. Under heavy diplomatic pressure, a cornered Israel finally capitulated with the head of Mossad himself flying to Jordan with the antidote that brought back Mashal from his near-death.

The Mashal Affair stands as a textbook example when both Israel’s political and intelligence establishments acted with equal recklessness. It reflected a convergence of overambitious political will and flawed operational planning, underpinned by the belief that bold actions could force results.

By contrast, the audacious 1981 bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor was an instance where unilateral political resolve, even when intelligence counsel was wary, achieved stunning tactical success. Prime Minister Menachem Begin viewed the reactor as an existential threat, fearing Saddam Hussein would soon possess nuclear weapons aimed at Israel.

While Israeli intelligence agencies provided essential technical support and reconnaissance, they harboured significant reservations about Begin’s move to bomb the Iraqi reactor. Nevertheless, Begin made the decision to proceed with little deliberative consultation. Operation Opera saw Israeli jets fly deep into Iraqi airspace and destroy the reactor.

Facing existential threats since its birth in 1948, Israel’s leaders and intelligence agencies have constantly been torn between offensive action and strategic restraint. The Qatar strike lays bare the perils of privileging political impatience over measured caution. In Israel’s DNA, the porous boundary between war, espionage and politics makes it an especially fraught affair.