Yamina MK Ayelet Shaked secretly met with Mossad chief Yossi Cohen a week before the March 23rd election, Walla News reported on Wednesday.
The report quoted sources who said that the meeting did not deal with politics but focused on security-legal issues. Shaked served as a member of the inner security cabinet and as Israel’s justice minister from 2015 to 2019.
The purpose of the meeting though so close to elections, did raise eyebrows. Cohen is a known close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has touted the Mossad chief as a potential future successor. He is also known to be interested in running for political office once his term ends in June.
Ahead of the March election, Netanyahu declared that he would offer Cohen a role in a future government that he would establish even after the Mossad chief’s term ended. While Netanyahu has selected D – Cohen’s deputy – to replace him, the appointment has yet to be brought for approval to the full cabinet.
As a former Mossad chief, Cohen would not be able to run immediately for public office and would need to wait the mandatory cooling-off period of three years. That period would however be cancelled if an election is held in the middle (a fifth election), meaning that he would be able to run in the subsequent election (a sixth election).
Shaked is a known political rival of Netanyahu’s. Together with Yamina leader Naftali Bennett, she has been reluctant to declare her full support for Netanyahu and has said that she stands behind Bennett’s ongoing talks with Yair Lapid about the possible formation of a unity government without Likud.