Shabtai Shavit

As director-general of the Mossad under three prime ministers, Shabtai Shavit helped orchestrate a treaty between Israel and Jordan. But he also showed an iron hand. He died on Tuesday September 5 2023 during a vacation in Italy. He was 84. Shavit worked for the Mossad for 32 years, including seven as director under three prime ministers. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir chose him to lead the agency in 1989, and he was its director when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995. He was the first head of the Mossad — known officially as the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations — who had come of age after the nation’s founding. And he was the last Mossad director whose very name remained classified during his tenure, until secrecy was subsumed by a public commitment to transparency. Shavit was born on July 17, 1939, in Nesher, a suburb of coastal Haifa. After graduating from the private Hebrew Reali School in Haifa, he served in the Navy and then in an elite special forces unit of the Israeli military. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle East studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a master’s in public administration from Harvard. After retiring from the Mossad in 1996, Mr. Shavit became chief executive of Maccabi Health Care Services, one of the country’s largest health maintenance organizations. Among his survivors are his wife, Yael, who worked with him as a covert agent early in his career, and his children and grandchildren.