'But I was looking for something more intriguing and meaningful.' Following a meeting at which his interlocutors did not disclose their identities as Mossad agents, he spent a year undergoing interviews and psychological and practical tests. At the time he was in the midst of a PhD in Hebrew literature. But he adds: 'Assassinations did not and cannot solve the conflict that can only be done by negotiations and concessions on both sides.'īen-David was recruited to the Mossad after answering an opaque advertisement placed in an Israeli newspaper. For several months there were inquiries, and it's difficult to operate under such circumstances.' He defends assassinations as a way of reducing the number or scale of attacks. It was damaging to the Mossad's prestige. I just gave it to him.' Ben-David thought it was the right decision to hand over the antidote, rather than sacrifice two operatives. 'I was told to take the antidote to the lobby of the hotel and hand it over to a representative of the Jordanian security services. As the Hamas leader lay close to death in hospital, Jordan's King Hussein furiously demanded that Israel save Mashaal's life or face serious consequences, including the execution of its agents.īen-David was in an Amman hotel, holding the vial containing an antidote to the poison. The deadly substance was administered to Mashaal's left ear by two Mossad agents, but the men were unexpectedly arrested. The Mossad unit chose to poison Mashaal in the Jordanian capital, Amman. In 1997, Binyamin Netanyahu, then in his first term as Israel's prime minister, ordered the Mossad to eliminate Hamas's leader, Khaled Mashaal.

'In fact, the ratio of failure to success is about one to 1,000, according to my calculation.' Nevertheless, the former spy's career included close-up experience of a catastrophic operation. 'Things that go wrong, or moral dilemmas, or huge conflicts – this is the material of novels,' Ben-David told the Observer at his home just outside Jerusalem.

Thrown out of the Mossad, the agent decides to finish the job alone, but his former commander is determined to stop him. Duet in Beirut centres on an agent who is blamed for the failure of an operation to eliminate a Hezbollah leader after he balks at pulling the trigger when the target's daughter unexpectedly appears.

David fesliyan undercover spy agent