Last week, for the first time in my life, I met an Israeli intelligence official, a retired Mossad agent. On April 7, I gave a lecture at Tel Aviv University on the state of Turkey’s Kurdish issue. Although the room was not as full as I had wished, the audience was not only sincerely interested in the subject but some interesting people were present. Such as Eliezer Geizi Tsafrir.

Tsafrir was the former head of Mossad stations in Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran and Lebanon. He is a former Shabak [Israeli secret service] and Mossad senior official, who also served as the prime minister’s adviser on Arab affairs. Since he retired, he has written at least three books in Hebrew — the first one is entitled, “Ana Kurdi: War and Escape in Kurdistan.”

“Even after retirement, when we write something, it goes through some sort of censorship before getting published,” he told Al-Monitor. “I have gone through these procedures many times, and I am allowed to talk publicly on these matters. Mossad people usually don’t have such permission.”

Still, Tsafrir preferred not to comment directly on the current state of Turkey’s relations with the Kurds or what he thinks of the Turkish government’s engagement with the imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan. But he authoritatively denied that Mossad had played any role in his capture in 1999. He also said, "The PKK has decided to go through a major change, both militarily and politically. They might even have set relations with the US."