Who is David Barnea, head of the Mossad, who knows how to read the souls of his enemies?

From our correspondent
JERUSALEM — When he took over as head of the Mossad in June two years ago, the Israelis already knew it. David Parnia He would have maintained a less glamorous appearance than Yossi Cohen, whose speech was as flamboyant as his black hair, which was always slicked back. Which would once again put the silent emphasis on the word “confidential” accompanied by the client. As Yossi Melman, an Israeli intelligence expert, commented: “Fewer sensationalized murders and fewer appearances in front of the microphone for PR purposes, More covert operations are carried out in silence».

And also because the ability to make speeches that Cohen showed, to the point of becoming a potential successor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of the right, got him into trouble: the ex-husband of his ex-lover said in a television interview to boast about missions abroad, details were provided about the secret raids he carried out A man who had not yet moved all of 007’s agents but was already running campaigns that should have remained in the shadows.

During his thirty-year career within the Institute, Parnia (born in 1965) spent twenty-eight years in the Tzomet (Crossroads) unit dealing with identifying, recruiting and maneuvering agents around the world, focusing on foreign or Local teams to infiltrate between Lebanese Hezbollah and the Iranian high ranks. His abilities as a persuader and reader of human characters allowed him to leave his government job for a while to enrich himself at a large investment bank.

As a negotiator, it was he who traveled to Doha to meet with William Burns, the head of the CIA, and the sheikhs of Qatar, who had gone from financial sponsors and supporters of Hamas to the main mediators in the negotiations for the release of the prisoners. Hostages held by terrorists in Gaza.

When he realized last week that it was impossible to continue, he left and took his remaining group with him to Doha a few days later. Some analysts see it as a step by those who leave the table and return to it in a position of strength.

And yet the words he let slip – “Zero tolerance for Hamas games” – Leads to the hypothesis that by now he would have already exhausted his negotiating margins, both his own and those created by Netanyahu who now appears to be focused solely on eliminating Hamas.

As Cohen’s second-in-command, he followed directly from the headquarters north of Tel Aviv some of the raids against the nuclear program that the ayatollahs wanted in Tehran, and from him he also inherited the role of the secret messenger in countries with which Israel does not maintain diplomatic relations. (Qatar and others). He did not inherit from him the political rapprochement with the Prime Minister, which continued until the separation due to Cohen’s criticism of the justice plan implemented by the government.