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Eli Cohen is a name that doesn’t need any introduction. The famous Egyptian-born Israeli spy, who went on to develop close ties with the top military and government leadership of Syria in 1960s for intelligence collection before being uncovered and hanged, is a towering personality among global intelligence fables. Last week, Israel saw the rise of another Eli Cohen when Benjamin Netanyahu announced his new Cabinet.
Before the Cabinet was finalised, there was speculation on who should be the new Foreign Minister, an extremely important portfolio for a country that’s constantly at conflict. The names that were doing the rounds were that of veteran parliamentarian Israel Katz and Ron Dermer, a long-time confidant of Mr. Netanyahu. But Mr. Netanyahu eventually picked Eli Cohen, who had served as a Minister in his previous Cabinets holding Economy and Intelligence portfolios.
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Mr. Cohen has nothing in common with the legendary spy, besides the name. Born in Holon, south of Tel Aviv, in 1972, Mr. Cohen is a trained accountant. He has an MSc in Business Administration from Tel Aviv University and a BA in Accounting. He had served as a major in the Israeli Air Force. Before he joined politics, Mr. Cohen was a senior vice-president of the Israeli Land Development Company (ILDC). The ILDC is one of Israel’s oldest and largest real estate conglomerates with its roots going back to early Jewish settlements in historical Palestine. Founded in 1909 by the Zionist Federation, an umbrella organisation for Zionist movements in the U.K., the ILDC, which was then called the Palestine Land Development Company, helped early Zionists build Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine. In 2015, after a two-year stint at the ILDC, Mr. Cohen joined the centrist Kulanu party, founded by Moshe Kahlon, a former Finance Minister of Mr. Netanyahu.
Member of the Knesset
Kulanu’s focus was on addressing Israel’s socio-economic problems, but it also appealed to the populist camp. Mr. Kahlon once said his party represented the ideas of Menachem Begin, the first Likud Prime Minister. When Kulanu became the fifth largest party in the Knesset after the 2015 elections (winning 10 seats), Mr. Cohen became an MK along with Mr. Kahlon. He was appointed chairman of the parliamentary reforms committee and then joined the finance committee, while Mr. Kahlon was the Economy Minister. Mr. Cohen would take over the Economy portfolio from his former boss in two years.
In the 2019 election, Mr. Cohen was placed second on the Kulanu list, while Mr. Kahlon was fifth. The party won only four seats — Mr. Cohen was reelected to the Knesset but the party’s influence was receding. A year later, Kulanu merged with Likud. Mr. Cohen won global attention in May 2020 when he was appointed the Minister of Intelligence. Within a few months, Israel announced normalisation of agreements with the UAE, the first agreement between the Jewish state and an Arab country since the 1994 peace treaty with Jordan. Mr. Cohen is said to have played a major role in finalising the agreement.
After the UAE, Bahrain also normalised ties with Israel as part of what was later called the Abraham Accords. Mr. Cohen then led an official delegation to Sudan to extend the Abraham Accords to more countries. “I am confident this visit lays the foundations for many important collaborations, which will assist both Israel and Sudan as well as uphold security and stability in the region,” Mr. Cohen said then. Sudan and Morocco would soon join the Abraham Accords.
Now, as Foreign Minister, Mr. Cohen will be in a stronger position to influence and direct Israel’s foreign policy. There is a consensus among Israel’s political class that the country should strengthen ties with Sunni Arab countries as they face a common foe in Iran. According to Yair Lapid, the former Prime Minister who was also holding the foreign portfolio, normalisation of ties with Saudi Arabia “can happen soon”.
That’s the obvious road ahead for Mr. Cohen. But he is part of the most rightwing coalition in Israel’s history, with a clear agenda of expanding settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and remaking Israel’s judicial system and amending its state-religion balance. The challenge before him as Foreign Minister is to preserve and expand Israel’s ties with both allies and potential partners, irrespective of the far-right turn of its domestic politics.
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