Mossad Shadow War: Between Secret Meetings in Paris and Informants in Gaza
For a very long time, rumors in France have led people to think that the Mossad’s biggest office in the EU had relocated to Brussels, but a recent investigation conducted by Alexandra Savian, a grand reporter at French outlet L’Express, reveals that this urban myth couldn’t be further from the truth. Despite the recent tensions between Paris and Tel Aviv, France Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) and the Mossad have been closely working together on issues related to counterterrorism and nuclear proliferation, in particular on the Iranian dossier. However, their partnership didn’t stop there…
The cooperation between DGSE and the Mossad saw a drastic increase after France closed its embassy in Damascus, Syria, in 2012. Since then, France has been relying substantially on Mossad intelligence to acquire information regarding security issues in the southern region of Syria, especially to remain updated on the threat associated with the Islamic State. According to Alexandra Savian, the Mossad cherishes its relationship with the French intelligence services, as it provides a buffer, which allows Israel to avoid relying on too many face-to-face meetings with Trump’s administration and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The French Navy’s intelligence gathering capabilities in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, boosted by intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance (IRS) vessels and planes, have proven to be very valuable for the Mossad.
The first reaction of Israeli general Aharon Haliva, who headed military intelligence on the day of the Oct 7 attack conducted by the Palestinian Resistance Group Hamas, was to immediately travel to Paris to meet with Nicolas Lerner, the Director General of the Directorate General for Internal Security (DGSI), who became Director General of the General Directorate of External Security (DGSE) on January 9, 2024. A desperate Haliva was aware that the human resources and assets cultivated by the DGSE in West Asia, along with those on the ground in Gaza, could offer crucial intelligence for the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies to comprehend the events of October 7 and clarify how this could have occurred under his watch. Although France has consistently been hesitant to disclose its information regarding the enclave, the precise details of the meeting are still unclear.
Many still remember General Haliva’s statement, after the Oct 7 attack, when he declared on Israel’s Channel 12 TV station, that:
“50 Palestinians must die for every person killed that day, and it does not matter now if they are children.”
In a strategic context disrupted by the Israeli-Iranian war, cooperation between intelligence services continues on key issues for France and Israel. On June 17, 2025, Intelligence Online released an in-depth report that provides a unique perspective on the activities “Behind the Scenes” within the context of the collaboration between the Mossad and the DGSE on Iran, Gaza, and Baku.
Since 1948, the French and Israeli intelligence services have maintained a unique relationship, despite frequent tensions. This bond is now weakened by France’s recognition of Palestine. In the following investigative report released by L’Express, Alexandra Saviana unveils previously undisclosed information regarding the MOSSAD and DGSE secret meetings held in Paris, as well as the informants located in Gaza…
Alexandra Saviana reports for L’Express…
(translated from French to English using DeepL)
Mossad – DGSE, our revelations: between secret meetings in Paris and informants in Gaza Intelligence.
Since 1948, the French and Israeli secret services have cultivated a special relationship, despite frequent tensions. A bond now weakened by the recognition of Palestine.
In the fall of 2023, General Aharon Haliva travels to the DGSE headquarters in Paris. The director of Israeli military intelligence arrives directly from Tel Aviv. Still stunned, he attempts to shed light on the events of October 7, 2023. Israel has just experienced the largest attack in its history: 1,218 deaths in a few hours, commandos breaching a supposedly impregnable barrier, kibbutzim ravaged. Unable to explain the collective blindness, Haliva turns to Paris.
According to sources close to French intelligence, the DGSE has what the Israelis sorely lack: quality informants in Gaza. For several years, Tel Aviv has relied on high technology, neglecting its human sources. Haliva knows, however, that France is reluctant to share its information on the enclave. “That’s how desperate he was,” fumes an Israeli diplomat. “We don’t ask that of France!”
The exact content of the meeting remains unknown. But the approach speaks volumes. No Israeli military intelligence chief would have thought of knocking on this door if there weren’t a deep relationship. Just a few days before October 7, Mossad director David Barnea also passed through Paris, a thick file under his arm. Tucked into his folder was a financial aid plan for the Gaza Strip. The Israeli wanted to speak with the diplomatic cell about this project—obviously aborted after the terrorist attack.
IMAGE: Israeli Mossad Director David Barnea speaks at the International Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT) Global Summit in the central coastal city of Herzliya on September 10, 2023.(Source: AFP)
“They are incredibly strong.”
France knows the area well, and its expertise is in demand. “In Gaza, the best sensors are those of the DGSE,” says a recently retired secret service officer, not a little proud of demonstrating superiority over Israeli intelligence. For between the two services, it’s often a matter of impressing the other. “Exchanging with the Israelis means benefiting from the information of a country at war, which is constantly working on its intelligence,” says another DGSE veteran, admiring, like many of his colleagues, the audacity of his counterparts.
The coordinated explosion of Hezbollah pagers in Lebanon in 2024, or the strikes on Iran in 2025, particularly stunned French spies. “The Mossad can spend years recruiting a goat herder from the Zagros Mountains. We have neither the time nor the political will for that,” praises our source. “They are incredibly strong, especially on Syria and Iran,” adds a diplomat.
“The Mossad has a file on you.”
As for Israeli spies, they consult Paris in particular for the quality of its intelligence on Lebanon and the Eastern Mediterranean. “France has always had significant technical and human intelligence capabilities. We are well aware that our intelligence resources are not unlimited,” concedes Eran Lerman, former deputy for foreign policy and international affairs at the Israeli Prime Minister’s National Security Council.
For seventy years, the Mossad and the DGSE have helped and fascinated each other. They also sized each other up, sometimes with a hint of distrust, as illustrated by this exchange with an Israeli intelligence officer recounted by Bernard Bajolet, director of the DGSE between 2012 and 2017. In an elevator, the man who was then deputy director for North Africa and the Middle East at the Quai d’Orsay introduced himself to Yehuda Lancry, who had just been appointed Israeli ambassador to France. “Oh, are you the famous Bajolet?” he exclaimed, adding action to his words: “The Mossad has a file on you this thick.” Bajolet replied: “The CIA has three times that much!” The spymaster was able to experience how the two agencies know how to put aside their very real rivalry: “There has always been a background of mistrust towards us, but we do not skimp when it comes to the fight against terrorism or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We find each other despite political differences.”
IMAGE: Former DGSE Director Bernard Bajolet in Paris, September 1, 2022 (Source: AFP/Ludovic Marin)
Complicated relationship
From the port of Haifa, a coastal city in northern Israel, until recent months, the shape of a ship could sometimes be seen silhouetted against the horizon. It kept a safe distance away, avoiding the rockets launched from Lebanon by Hezbollah. Every five weeks, this French frigate sailed off the port. It came to share some of the information collected in the Mediterranean with the Israeli navy. “Enough to see everything on and underwater, from the Egyptian shores to the Turkish coasts, all the way to Libya,” says one expert. This information is more than valuable for a country like Israel, which is weaker in terms of underwater intelligence.
“France also sails the Dupuy de Lôme, an intelligence-gathering ship, in the Eastern Mediterranean,” adds General Christophe Gomart, former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate from 2013 to 2017, now a member of the European Parliament (LR). “The Israelis believe we are doing a good job of gathering information.” Paris shares information from its listening station in Cyprus or the product of its aerial surveillance campaigns over Syria and southern Lebanon. In the spring of 2025, a French spy plane regularly flew over Israeli airspace without incident, despite diplomatic tensions. Opposed over Gaza, Tel Aviv and Paris are both concerned about Turkish occupation ambitions in northern Syria. “We have a rather complicated relationship, but we cannot do without it because we have common interests,” points out a former senior official of the DGSE.
IMAGE: The Dupuy-de-Lôme (A759), an intelligence gathering vessel of the French Navy working for the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM) and the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) (Source: Mer et Marine)
The two services regularly act as intermediaries for each other. In June 2025, in the midst of tensions with Azerbaijan, Paris asked the Mossad to open discussions with Baku. A year earlier, just before the pager operation, the Israelis called on the United States and France to “send a warning” to Hezbollah. “But the Americans were less forthcoming about the scale of our attack,” said a senior Israeli official. “Whereas the French conveyed the message very precisely.” The episode clearly illustrates Israeli concerns. “The Israelis are happy not to find themselves locked into a bilateral relationship with the CIA and Washington,” notes a former secret agent.
“A rumor has long claimed that the Mossad’s largest office in the EU has moved to Brussels. This is a decoy. In Paris, the guys are playing at home.” A diplomat
According to Intelligence Online, a Mossad delegation was still in France on September 8. It was discussing a ceasefire plan for Gaza with Egyptians, Qataris, and Americans, which didn’t stop the Israeli government from bombing Hamas negotiators in Doha less than two days later. Two months earlier, in the middle of summer, a meeting was organized in Paris, under American sponsorship, between the head of Syrian diplomacy and an Israeli minister. In March, on the sidelines of a visit by the new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the intelligence services of the two countries met. Again, in Paris. “Firstly, because it’s convenient for the Syrians: we ensure their security. But above all, because Paris allows the Israelis to be there without it being noticed,” explains a diplomat. The city is said to house the largest Mossad office in the European Union. “A rumor has long claimed that they had migrated to Brussels. It’s a decoy. In Paris, the guys are playing at home,” assures the diplomat.
IMAGE: Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Shareh at the Antalya Diplomatic Forum in Türkiye on April 11, 2025 (Source: AFP/Ozan Kose)
Mossad’s most secret device
A historical attraction. After the creation of Israel, the understanding between the two countries was so strong that Shimon Peres, then a young Israeli Deputy Minister of Defense, had his own office on Rue Saint Dominique, at the French Ministry of Defense. In 1965, Paris housed the most important Mossad station in Western Europe. From there, the Israeli services managed their agents and contacts from Arab countries. The “cold snap” in Franco-Israeli relations that came with the Six-Day War two years later had little impact on the Mossad’s presence in Paris.
To the point of fomenting murders. In 1992, Atef Bseiso, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, was gunned down outside his hotel in Montparnasse. Adding insult to injury, the assassination took place a few hours after a secret meeting with French counterintelligence. “The DST was furious,” recalls Antoine Comte, lawyer for the PLO. The investigation revealed that a mole within the organization in Tunis, Adnan Yassine, a close associate of Yasser Arafat, had informed the Mossad. The investigation led the DST to a sophisticated voicemail system, “the most secret device in the Mossad,” notes investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, who was in charge of the investigation, in a book of interviews. Very quickly, the Israelis knew they had been discovered. They dismantled their network. The DST will have no choice but to let the affair leak to the press.
Embarrassment around Hamas
At the time, France was deepening its relations with the Palestinian authorities. After the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the launch of the peace process between the PLO and Israel, a DGSE post was established at the consulate in Jerusalem. It was responsible for monitoring the West Bank and Gaza. “It was to establish the classic intelligence structure in a country in the process of being recognized, the Palestinian state,” comments a diplomat stationed in the area. The Israelis were aware of its existence, without necessarily appreciating it. During a border crossing, one of these agents even received a warning shot from an Israeli tank in the early 2000s. “I saw Mossad agents twice,” says a former head of this post. “When they arrived, they questioned my knowledge of the files. When they left, they told me to be careful. That with my acquaintances in Gaza, there was always the risk of an attack.”
“Kouchner was furious. He accused me of tipping off the press, which was false. Voices screamed, doors slammed, and that was it.” A diplomat
Hamas’s victory in 2006 further strained the situation. Paris banned all official contact, but the organization’s officials left notes for the president at the French Institute in Gaza. To circumvent the blockage, Bernard Kouchner sent Yves Aubin de la Messuzière, former director of the North Africa and Middle East section of the Quai d’Orsay, in 2008. The Arab-speaking diplomat arrived under academic cover: he was officially there as an associate researcher at CERI-Sciences Po. But the operation was abruptly interrupted after a leak to Le Figaro. “Kouchner was furious. He accused me of tipping off the press, which was false. Voices screamed, doors slammed, and that was it,” says the diplomat, who published Israel-Palestine, the Denial of International Law (Editions Hémisphères).
Rich technical cooperation
The DGSE (Directorate General for Security and Defence) is directly resuming contact on the ground, particularly during events at the French Cultural Institute. According to two sources familiar with the DGSE, “clandestines”—undeclared agents—will also subsequently travel to Gaza, this time under the pretext of humanitarianism. “We needed to understand Hamas’s different political leanings, but the French government didn’t want to give them credibility by officially establishing contact,” explains a source close to the matter.
The Israelis were able to get used to the idea of this secret presence. Because they too saw an interest in it. In 2006, after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the head of the DGSE station in Jerusalem organized “to reestablish a ceasefire, fruitful meetings between emissaries of Sheikh Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, and Israeli representatives, some of whom were, naturally, members of the Mossad,” write Jean Guisnel, Roger Faligot and Rémi Kauffer in Histoire politique des services secrets français . “The Turks also contributed,” tempers a former member of the agency. “But we certainly played a role.” At the same time, Mossad and DGSE established a rich technical cooperation. “We developed a very high-performance electromagnetic system with a research laboratory to detect tunnels,” recalls a former executive of the DGSE’s technical department. “The Israelis were able to map a four-kilometer network on the Egyptian border.” Mossad and DGSE leaders even stayed locked up “for two days to brainstorm,” he recalls.
“Paris and Tel Aviv have always been on the same wavelength when it comes to the Iranian issue.” An Israeli diplomat
That same year, a vast network of Mossad moles was discovered by Hezbollah on the border. DGSE officials listened as those from Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, expressed their displeasure. Its head accused France of having “over-equipped” the country’s intelligence services with detection technology. “You’ve helped the Lebanese too much!” he exclaimed. The French smiled. They knew this reproach was part of the usual spies’ routine. Since Sarkozy’s presidency , intelligence sharing had increased significantly, particularly on Iranian nuclear proliferation. The Mossad conducted obstruction operations against the country’s nuclear facilities—several assassinations of scientists were attributed to it. For its part, the DGSE identified the presence of an atomic center near the city of Qom. This information will be transmitted to the Americans, the British, and the Israelis in the summer of 2009. “Paris and Tel Aviv have always been on the same wavelength regarding the Iranian question, which has not always been the case for the Americans,” explains an Israeli diplomat. “This issue is one of the pillars of our services’ relations.”
The assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Bahbouh in Dubai by Mossad agents in January 2010 barely disrupted this understanding. It didn’t matter that the spies had returned to the United Arab Emirates with stolen passports, including French ones. It didn’t matter that the nerve center of the operation was in a room at a Campanile hotel in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. The Mossad is fond of Parisian hotels, and had been using them until recently for operations. But that day, France didn’t want to cause a scene. Patrick Calvar, then director of intelligence at the DGSE, and Frédéric Veaux, number two at the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), were sent to Tel Aviv to bully Mossad director Meir Dagan. Just for show. When the Mossad chief was invited to meet Bernard Squarcini, the head of French counterintelligence, in a private room at the Intercontinental, he asked him: “Do I still have a friend in Paris?” The French leader smiled. The quarrel was over.
IMAGE: Bernard Squarcini, February 18, 2014, in Paris (Source: AFP/Francois Guillot)
Compromises
A more serious affair would emerge a year later. At that time, French and Israeli intelligence services were cooperating on an operation to combat the proliferation of chemical weapons. Codenamed Ratafia, the spies were working to trap a Syrian official. Approached in Damascus, convinced to continue part of his life in France, the man was showered with money and gifts. By the time he finally realized he was in the clutches of intelligence services, the Syrian had already delivered essential information to the Mossad.
But the operation’s success came at a price for France. As Le Monde revealed , as early as 2011, the DCRI suspected the Israelis of using “Ratafia” to establish somewhat too deep ties with French agents. One of the police officers celebrated Shabbat with David Keidar, the Mossad station chief in Paris; went shooting in Dubai; and spent family vacations with spy friends in Jerusalem. Mossad also tried to sell surveillance equipment to the French police and the GIGN (National Guard of the Interior). Paris was furious. In 2012, two members of the Israeli embassy, including the Mossad station chief, were forced to leave France.
“Closing this embassy would mean going blind and deaf in Syria.” A former senior executive of the DGSI
Despite these dirty tricks, exchanges continue. The rise of terrorism and the instability following the Arab Spring make cooperation with Israel particularly valuable. In March 2012, François Hollande decided to close the French embassy in Damascus, against the advice of the intelligence services. “Closing this embassy was like going blind and deaf in Syria,” observes a former senior DGSI official. “It was something we could ill afford, with the rise of the Islamic State and the Syrian civil war.” Paris is turning to Israel to compensate. Tel Aviv is enlightening it, particularly regarding southern Syria. “We’re on life support from the Mossad. Even in France, it provided us with information that helped foil planned attacks like the one in Villepinte against Iranian opponents in 2018,” continues the former DGSI official.
Since October 7, the two services have clashed. Nearly a month after the attack, the Quai d’Orsay announced that “Israeli authorities” had informed it that the French Institute in Gaza had been targeted “by an Israeli strike.” Shortly after, the IDF entered the building. According to Le Figaro, cultural files, as well as “computers containing information related to intelligence activities conducted by France in the enclave,” were reportedly seized. No comment was made by the French authorities after this incident.
“Very close” security ties
More recently, France’s distancing itself from Israeli bombings has fueled tensions, including between spies. “Israel took it very badly to be excluded from your arms fairs,” an Israeli diplomat explained, referring to the ban on Israeli companies participating in Eurosatory starting in May 2024. “You didn’t understand that you were attacking our strategic interests. This inevitably strained relations.” At the end of August, Benjamin Netanyahu even accused Emmanuel Macron of “fueling the anti-Semitic fire” with his call for recognition of the State of Palestine. Paris’s move on Monday, September 23, at the UN podium only increased its fury. On its return from New York, the Prime Minister’s plane avoided French airspace—despite its authorization to do so.
According to the Israeli press, the option of closing the French consulate in Jerusalem, or even expelling French diplomats from the country, is being considered. “We must distinguish between what is declared and what is real: security ties remain very close,” qualifies historian Elie Barnavi, former Israeli ambassador to France. A French expert on these issues adds: “The dialogue between the services has never been interrupted. It takes place in a climate of great trust.”
The two capitals continue to communicate through their spymasters. L’Express can confirm that, in recent months, David Barnea has met his counterpart at the DGSE, Nicolas Lerner, several times, in Tel Aviv and Paris. Almost as if nothing had happened.
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