Report: Israel trying to gather intel on burial places in Syria of famous spy Eli Cohen, missing IDF soldiers

Israeli authorities are taking advantage of the downfall of the Assad regime in Syria to attempt to find the burial place in Syria of legendary spy Eli Cohen, according to a Lebanese media report citing diplomatic sources.

Cohen was caught by Syria in 1965 and hanged in Damascus.

The Hezbollah-aligned paper says Israel has initiated contacts both inside Syria and abroad to try to find information on where the agent is buried.

Renewed Israeli efforts to locate the bodies of IDF soldiers Tzvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, who were both declared missing after the Battle of Sultan Yacoub with Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1982, have also been launched, according to the report.

In February 2021, it was reported that Russia, in cooperation with Syrian authorities and under Israeli pressure, was searching the area of the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus for Cohen’s body in order to transfer it to Israel.

The following month, an object believed to have belonged to Cohen was reportedly transferred to Israel. Quoting an unnamed Syrian government source, Israeli reports said at the time that the item could be a document or an article of Cohen’s clothing.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied the reports at the time, and it remains unknown whether such an object actually existed.