JERUSALEM: Israel announced on Sunday that it had retrieved the official Syrian archive on famed spy Eli Cohen — a cache of 2,500 documents, photographs and personal effects linked to the Mossad agent executed in Damascus in 1965.
“In a complex covert operation by the Mossad, in cooperation with a strategic partner service, the official Syrian archive on Eli Cohen was brought to Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, referring to the country’s external intelligence agency.
“The trove contains thousands of items that had been kept under tight security by Syrian intelligence for decades,” the statement added.
Cohen, who developed close ties with high-level political and military figures in Syria as part of a four-year espionage operation, was eventually discovered by Syrian intelligence.
He was publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965.
Cohen’s story was dramatized in the Netflix minizeries “The Spy,” starring the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen.
The prime minister added that retrieving the archive reflected Israel’s “unwavering commitment to bringing back all our missing, prisoners, and hostages.”
The statement was an apparent reference both to the 58 captives, dead and alive, being held by Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, as well as the announcement last week that Israel had retrieved from Syria the body of a soldier missing for 43 years, also in a covert Mossad operation.
Sunday’s statement said that the recovery of the items came after “decades of Mossad intelligence, operational, and technological effort to find every scrap of information about Eli Cohen in the quest to shed light on his fate and discover the location of his burial.”
Over the years, multiple operations have been carried out to that end, the statement said, including “inside enemy states.”
Mossad director David Barnea said in the statement that recovering the archive was a “significant achievement,” and “another step toward locating our man in Damascus’ burial place.”
Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations and those of his sources, letters he wrote to family members in Israel and photographs from his clandestine mission in Syria.
Additionally, the cache included belongings taken from his home after his arrest, including forged passports and photographs of him with senior Syrian military and government officials, as well as notebooks and diaries listing Mossad tasks.
Also discovered was a file labelled “Nadia Cohen,” detailing Syrian intelligence monitoring of Cohen’s wife’s campaign to free her husband.
In a special meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu and Barnea shared the trove of items with Nadia Cohen, the statement said.
Israel says retrieved official Syrian archive on executed spy Eli Cohen
https://arab.news/pwzm6
Israel says retrieved official Syrian archive on executed spy Eli Cohen
- Eli Cohen was discovered by Syrian intelligence and publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965
- Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations
Blaze at Cairo telecoms building contained
- A state TV reporter later said the fire, whose cause was not immediately clear, had been contained
- A plume of smoke could be seen above the Ramses district of Cairo, Reuters witnesses said
CAIRO: A fire broke out in a telecommunications building in central Cairo, local media reported on Monday.
It led to communications disruptions across the Egyptian capital, including people being unable to make phone calls, Reuters witnesses said.
A state TV reporter later said the fire, whose cause was not immediately clear, had been contained. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
A plume of smoke could be seen above the Ramses district of Cairo, Reuters witnesses said.
Egypt’s state news agency MENA said Cairo’s Control Center for emergency services had received a report of a fire in one of the building’s top floors, without giving further detail.
Israeli soldier describes alleged arbitrary killings of civilians in Gaza
- Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, the reservist claimed troops were often instructed to shoot anyone entering areas considered to be off limits
LONDON: An Israeli army reservist has claimed that civilians in Gaza were frequently shot without warning or threat during his service, describing what he called shifting and often arbitrary rules of engagement that, at times, led to the killing of unarmed people.
In a rare on-camera interview with Sky News, the soldier, who served three tours of duty in Gaza with the Israeli military, said troops were often instructed to shoot anyone entering areas considered to be off limits, regardless of whether they posed a threat or not.
“We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die,” he told Sky News. “If they’re inside, they’re dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is.”
Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, the reservist from the Israeli military’s 252nd Division said he was twice stationed at the Netzarim corridor, a narrow military-controlled strip carved through central Gaza early in the war to divide the territory and tighten Israeli control.
He described how his unit marked invisible boundaries near civilian areas, sometimes while occupying homes belonging to displaced Palestinians. Local residents, he said, were expected to understand these lines without explanation or risk being shot.
“There’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know. But how can they know?” he said. “It might be like a teenager riding his bicycle.”
The soldier said the decision to open fire on civilians frequently depended on the “mood of the commander,” with criteria for engagement varying from day to day, adding: “They might be shot, they might be captured, it really depends on the day.”
He recalled one incident in which a man was shot for crossing the boundary, followed by another who was detained for approaching the body, only for the rules to change again hours later, with orders to shoot anyone crossing the line.
The soldier alleged that commanders were able to set their own rules of engagement, sometimes with deadly consequences.
“Every commander can choose for himself what he does. So it’s kind of like the Wild West,” he said. “Some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don’t face the consequences of that.”
He also described a pervasive culture among troops that viewed all Gazans as legitimate targets in the aftermath of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel and led to more than 250 taken hostage.
“They’d say: ‘Yeah, but these people didn’t do anything to prevent October 7, and they probably had fun when this was happening to us. So they deserve to die’,” he said.
“People don’t feel mercy for them. I think the core of it, that in their mind, these people aren’t innocent,” he added.
In Israel, where military service is a social rite of passage and the military is widely seen as a unifying national institution, public criticism of the armed forces is rare. The soldier told Sky News he feared being branded a traitor but felt compelled to speak out.
“I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out,” he said. “I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country.”
He added: “I think a lot of people, if they knew exactly what’s happening, it wouldn’t go down very well for them, and they wouldn’t agree with it.”
When asked about the allegations, the Israeli military told Sky News that it “operates in strict accordance with its rules of engagement and international law, taking feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
According to the statement: “The IDF operates against military targets and objectives, and does not target civilians or civilian objects.”
The military said complaints or reports of alleged violations are “transferred to the relevant authorities responsible for examining exceptional incidents that occurred during the war.”
It also highlighted steps it says it takes to minimise civilian casualties, including issuing evacuation notices and regular updates about combat zones.
On the radio and online, Palestinians keep up with Israel’s West Bank roadblocks
- Israeli obstacles to Palestinians’ movement in the West Bank have proliferated since the 2023 start of the war in Gaza
- In early 2025 there were 849 obstacles restricting the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including checkpoints, road gates, earth walls, trenches and roadblocks
RAWABI: Radio presenter Hiba Eriqat broadcasts an unusual kind of traffic reports to her Palestinian listeners grappling with ever-increasing Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks across the occupied West Bank.
“Deir Sharaf: traffic, Qalandia: open, Container: closed,” Eriqat reads out from drivers’ live reports, enumerating checkpoints to let listeners know which of the West Bank’s hundreds of checkpoints and gates are open, busy with traffic, or closed by the Israeli military.
“My mission is to help Palestinian citizens get home safely,” she told AFP in the radio studio in the city of Rawabi between her thrice-hourly broadcasts.
“Covering traffic in the West Bank is completely different from covering traffic anywhere else in the world.”
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has long been dotted with checkpoints, but obstacles to Palestinians’ movement in the territory have proliferated since the 2023 start of the war in Gaza — a separate territory.
In the West Bank, a territory roughly the size of the US state of Delaware, there are hundreds of new checkpoints and gates, but Israeli authorities do not provide updates about their status.
“The army might suddenly close a checkpoint, and the traffic jam would last an hour. Or they might just show up and then withdraw seconds later, and the checkpoint is cleared,” Eriqat said.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in early 2025 there were 849 obstacles restricting the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including checkpoints, road gates, earth walls, trenches and roadblocks.
Updates on WhatsApp groups
To navigate, Palestinians often rely on minute-by-minute updates from drivers on WhatsApp and Telegram groups, some of which were created by Basma Radio to feed Eriqat’s broadcasts.
“We turned to taxi drivers, truck drivers, private companies and even ordinary people,” said Eriqat, to create the West Bank’s only traffic report of its kind.
The updates were launched in October 2023 — the same month the Gaza war broke out — and are now broadcast by other Palestinian radio stations too.
A Telegram group run by Basma Radio now has some 16,000 members.
Fatima Barqawi, who runs news programs at the station, said the team had created “contact networks with people on the roads,” also receiving regular updates from Palestinians who live near checkpoints and can see the traffic from their window.
Beyond the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities, the traffic reports sometimes feature warnings about roads blocked by Israeli settlers, whose attacks against Palestinians have also risen throughout the war.
It is a constantly shifting roadscape, Eriqat said, complicating even what otherwise should have been a quick drive to work, home or to see family and friends.
“You might tell people the checkpoint is open now, but three minutes later, it’s jammed again. And it’s not a regular jam — it could last six or seven hours,” she said.
Safe journey ‘not guaranteed’
Maen, a 28-year-old video editor, used to tune in to Basma Radio to plan his weekly commute from Ramallah to his hometown of Bethlehem, but now prefers checking what other drivers have to say.
“I often call a friend who has Telegram while I’m on the road” and ask for updates from checkpoints, said Mazen, who asked to use his first name only for security reasons.
He has deleted Telegram from his own phone after hearing about Palestinians getting into trouble with soldiers at checkpoints over the use of the messaging app.
But in a sign of its popularity, one group in which drivers share their updates has 320,000 members — more than one-tenth of the West Bank’s population.
Rami, an NGO worker living in Ramallah who also declined to give his full name, said he listened to the radio traffic reports but mainly relied on Telegram groups.
Yet a safe journey is far from guaranteed.
Rami told AFP he recently had to stop on the way to his hometown of Nablus.
“I pulled over, checked the news and saw that 100 settlers had gathered at a settlement’s road junction and started throwing stones at Palestinian cars,” recognizable by their green license plates, he said.
And passing through a military checkpoint often “depends on the soldier’s mood,” said Eriqat.
“That’s the difficult part.”
Syria, Libya resume direct flights after 10-year halt due to political turmoil
- Syrian Civil Aviation Authority says Syrian Airlines will operate direct flights from next week
- Move will help Syrians return home following collapse of Assad regime late last year, authority says
LONDON: The Syrian Arab Republic announced the resumption of direct flights to Libya after a pause of more than 10 years due to security and political turmoil in both countries.
The head of the Syrian Civil Aviation Authority, Ashhad Al-Sulaibi, said that Syrian Airlines will operate direct flights starting next week from Damascus and Aleppo to the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi.
He added that the move will help to reconnect Syria with its communities abroad and help Syrians to return to their homes following the collapse of the Assad regime last December.
Commercial flights between Syria and Libya were halted over 10 years ago due to political turmoil and civil armed conflicts that engulfed both countries in 2011.
Israel grabs Palestinian land near Ramallah to expand settler outpost
- The Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission says Israeli authorities have incorporated the newly seized area into the Malakhi HaShalom outpost
- More than 700,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank, where the Israelis have maintained a military occupation since June 1967
LONDON: The Palestinian Authority’s settlement activity watchdog reported that Israeli authorities on Monday seized 77.4 hectares of land in northeastern Ramallah, the administrative capital in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission said that the land in the villages of Al-Mughayir and Jabait was declared “state land” to justify its seizure on Monday.
The commission added that Israeli authorities have incorporated the newly captured area into the Malakhi HaShalom outpost, an illegal Israeli settlement established in 2015 on land belonging to the village of Al-Mughayir. The Israeli far-right government in 2023 announced a plan to legalize Malakhi HaShalom and expand its territory.
The commission reported that the total Israeli land grab, designated as “state land” since early 2023, is estimated at 6,381 hectares, or 25,824 dunams, a measurement used by Palestinians since the Ottoman era.
More than 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank, where the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation since June 1967. The expansion of settlements has long been viewed as an obstacle to the establishment of a Palestinian state and the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
