op-ed: Secret channels are the cornerstone of successful diplomacy

I know it's really hard to keep a big secret. Even more so when you are a politician and have to publicize your success so that the public will remember your name. There are people, for example, in the intelligence community whose whole life is basically one big secret. Sometimes she has a second identity. They live in other countries. They meet people and open contacts with countries that do not have diplomatic relations with the country they belong to. Well, politicians are not part of the intelligence community. Sometimes it's hard to realize how unintelligent they are.

Direct covert back channels are the juice of diplomacy. It is the hard work of diplomats especially from a country located in a region where open diplomatic relations are far from the norm. These direct secret back channels are difficult to open.

It is based on a long process of building trust and can be destroyed with a single leak beyond what was agreed upon. I know some diplomats from here and other countries who have spent their lives opening secret back channels directly. I know people in the intelligence community who did, too. They will never talk about their work publicly, even after they retire. I have never been a diplomat nor worked for any intelligence organization. I can talk about what I've done in the past. I have been running secret back channels between Israelis and Palestinians since 1989. I have run dozens of them. Recently, a senior Likud MK rejected my invitation to participate in a secret back channel at the request of senior PA officials, saying, "In Israel, it is impossible to keep anything a secret." My answer, based on my experience, is that as long as the participants themselves are interested in keeping it a secret, it will remain a secret. At the moment I am running three secret channels and hope to start another soon. I had been running a secret back channel with Hamas for one week after Gilad Shalit was withdrawn to Gaza in June 2006. Throughout the five years and four months he spent in captivity, there were times when Israeli government officials would use the secret back channel as a means of relaying messages to Hamas leadership. Hamas has often used this back channel to pass messages to Israel. From April 2011 until Gilad's return to his "homeland" in mid-October 2011, this channel was official and supported by senior Israeli national security officials. Prime Minister Netanyahu gave his support to this channel on the condition that it remain confidential. It worked, and as a result, Gilad Shalit returned home.

And Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen could not keep the secret. Secret channels are the cornerstone of successful diplomacy. The current relations between Israel and the UAE are the result of 30 years of direct, covert back channels. Successful covert back channels always contained the necessary deniability that enabled participants to avoid questions and inquiries. The Oslo negotiations took place as a direct, secret back channel, and whether you think the original agreement, or the Declaration of Principles, was good or bad, there is no denying that a détente between Israel and the Palestinians could not have been achieved without a direct, secret back channel. The United States and the Soviet Union established direct, secret back channels for years that enabled arms control and arms reduction agreements. The United States and Iran implemented covert direct back channels (and continue to do so) that enabled the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015, in which Prime Minister Netanyahu persuaded President Trump to withdraw from exposing Israel and the world to a much greater risk of a nuclear Iran. This deal, with all its flaws, made the world a safer place and limited Iran's ability to get where it is today (without the deal). This agreement would never have happened without the direct secret back channel. The Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement would not have happened without the secret back channel in Morocco between Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Hassan al-Tohamy. There are plenty of examples of how direct secret back channels work and how they can eventually turn into open direct channels with full diplomatic relations.
All the successes of these and many other secret, little-known and unreported back channels make it even more difficult to understand why Foreign Minister Eli Cohen had to reveal his secret conversations with Libyan Foreign Minister Naglaa al-Mangoush, endangering her life and bringing a swift end to the conflict. This channel that had the potential to lead to something much bigger and more important than some secret meeting. The bottom line is that Foreign Minister Eli Cohen has proven that he should not be Israel's foreign minister (or any minister), and if we had a responsible prime minister, he would immediately dismiss Eli Cohen from his position in the Israeli government.