A final thought: someone I respect took me to task for being unduly harsh in my verdict on Cohen. I agree in one respect: I called for his resignation, which upon reflection I think was unwarranted. But I still think he ought to have been more circumspect, rather than have rushed to make public news of his no longer “secret meeting” with Libyan Foreign Minister Ajia Mangoush. He ought to have let the Libyan government decide how it wished to gradually persuade its volatile public of all the benefits to be derived from the “normalization of ties” with Israel.
I note that there are many in Israel who have been dismayed at Cohen’s misjudgment.
A former Mossad official expressed his deep misgivings here:
Former senior Mossad official Haim Tomer on Tuesday said that the fiasco surrounding the public exposure of the Israeli-Libyan official meetings could slow ongoing processes to try to advance normalization with the Saudis.
Tomer said that certain Israeli officials had clearly forgotten the secret rules that are supposed to apply to meeting with officials of countries with whom Jerusalem does not yet have diplomatic relations, but with whom it hopes to move in that direction.
And another acting Mossad official did so here:
A current Mossad official weighed in on Cohen’s release of news about the meeting with Mangoush.
An unnamed source in the Mossad spy agency was quoted by Channel 12 as saying Cohen’s conduct “has dealt immense damage to the ties formed in recent years,” adding: “He burned the bridge. It’s irreparable.”
And Netanyahu has shown his displeasure here:
In the wake of the Libya fiasco, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday instructed government ministers to get his personal approval in advance of and for the release for publication of any secret diplomatic meetings.
The clarification from Netanyahu’s office comes after the revelation of a meeting last week between Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen and his Libyan counterpart ignited a diplomatic firestorm.
Other officials in the right-wing government were also displeased, as reported here:
Senior government officials quoted by Hebrew media said Cohen caused serious damage to Israel’s foreign relations, and warned that Arab leaders would be deterred from forging tighter bonds.
This testifies to the amateurism with which the Foreign Ministry is run,” a ministry source told the Ynet news site.
Perhaps all that is not enough to convince everyone of Cohen’s folly. But it has convinced me.
——
A few days ago, on the sidelines of an international summit in Rome, Libyan Foreign Minister Najia Mangoush met for two hours with her Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, to discuss improving ties between the two countries. Cohen suggested areas where Israel could be of most help to Libya, in agriculture, water management, solar energy, and high tech. The talks had been arranged weeks in advance by Libyan and Israeli officials “at the highest level.” Mangoush is young, female, and a recent appointee, and would never have dared, without explicit authorization from higher-ups, to meet with Cohen. When the Israelis made public the news of their meeting, the Arab street in Tripoli went wild with fury. To save its own skin, the Libyan government of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Al-Dbeibeh insisted that Mangoush’s meeting with Cohen was unauthorized, and sacked her from her job. Now she has had to flee Libya in fear for her life; she is currently in Turkey.
More on this extraordinary turn of events can be found here: “Libya fires its FM amid furor over her unprecedented meet with Israeli counterpart,” Times of Israel, August 28, 2023:
Libyan officials say their PM was aware of talks, and Najla Mangoush flees to Turkey for safety, as storm grows after Israel’s Eli Cohen publicized their Italy sit-down
Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush was dismissed Monday over a meeting she held last week with her Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen, amid ballooning political fallout in both Jerusalem and Tripoli over the decision by Israel’s top diplomat to reveal that the two ministers held a “historic” sit-down last week in Rome.
This announcement by Israel of the meeting was a grave error on Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen’s part. He should have remained silent, and waited to see how the Libyan government wanted to handle the news. By announcing, with an air of triumph, news of the meeting, Cohen immediately enraged the Libyan street. He made it imossible for the Libyan government to to gradually let it be known that lower-level talks were being held to see what economic benefits Libya could derive from formal relations with Israel, and listing those possible areas where Libya could benefit the most from Israel’s help. Then, after weighing the reaction of the Libyan street, the government could proceed with more talks, or if the popular reaction was too negative, it could call a halt for now to further talks with Israel.
Following Cohen’s announcement of the meeting on Sunday, which was met with outrage in Libya, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh suspended Mangoush from her role and said an investigation panel would be formed to look into the meeting. Libya’s foreign ministry denied any formal talks were held with Cohen as scattered protests broke out in Tripoli and other western Libyan towns.
The Libyan Prime Minister Al-Dbeibeh, who had, of course, been the one “at the highest level” to give the go-ahead to Mangoush to meet with Eli Cohen, has been forced to placate the Libyan street by pretending she had acted on her own, and for that supposed infraction she had to be to dismissed to save his own political skin. That hasn’t satisfied some protesters, who continue to demand that Mangoush be punished more severely.
On Monday Dbeibeh fired Mangoush, Reuters reported, and a Libyan foreign ministry official confirmed Mangoush fled to Turkey out of concern for her safety.
Dbeibeh’s decision to suspend Mangoush suggested that he was not aware of the meeting. However, two senior Libyan government officials told The Associated Press the prime minister knew about the talks between his foreign minister and the Israeli chief diplomat….
Mangoush would never, without authorization from on high, have gone ahead with her meeting with Eli Cohen in Rome. Libyan officials have confirmed that Dbeibeh authorized the meeting that he now claims had been undertaken by Mangoush without his knowledge or approval. He had no doubt expected that the meeting would stay under wraps until a more propitious moment to announce it arrived; Dbeibeh was furious when Eli Cohen made his meeting with Mangoush public. At that point, with crowds roaming the streets of Tripoli, he had to sack her.
Cohen’s office was foolish to make public his meeting in Rome with Mangoush. The Israelis ought to have known that many Libyans would react with fury to that news. He should have waited for the Libyan government to gradually let the news out about contacts with Israel, always stressing the considerable economic benefits that Libya would derive from relations with Israel, noting that the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco had already greatly benefited from their “normalizataion of ties” with the Jewish state.
“The Foreign Minister and Foreign Ministry are committed to expanding Israel’s foreign relations… The leak about the meeting with Libya’s foreign minister did not come from the Foreign Ministry or the Foreign Minister’s office,” said a statement from the ministry….
The leak, about the Rome meeting, according to other reports, came from the Foreign Minister’s office; the ministry denies it. Whom should we believe? I’m inclined not to believe the Foreign Minister, who has proved to be most maladroit in office. Who else but Eli Cohen would have known of the meeting with Mangoush, and how long it lasted, and what were the topics discussed? Now he is trying to deny his diplomatic blunder of releasing information the Libyans wanted, for a while, to keep under wraps.
It was idiotic for Cohen, or someone else in the Foreign Ministry, to leak information that the Libyans had wanted to keep secret until they could figure out how to let the information out, not just about the Rome meeting, but about other Israeli-Libyan contacts in a way that would cause the least domestic opposition.
And the hysteria and hate shown not just to Israel, but to Najia Mangoush, by those Libyan mobs that have intimidated the government, should also be kept in mind. Mangoush has had to flee the country in fear for her life. No Libyan politician is likely to try again to start a dialogue with Israel any time soon. And Eli Cohen, who allowed the glad news of the Rome meeting be known long before the Libyan government could prepare its people for such an event, ought after such a massive blunder consider doing the right thing, and resign.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Is this Libyan govt the pro-Turkish GNA, or the more secular govt of Khilafa Haftar’s LNA? Who’s currently running Libya?
Nick says
Can anyone refute the Muslim apologist Shahid bolsen who has the YouTube channel middle nation. He sounds smart but i know he is a liar. He called these laws misogyny.