Israel's Diaspora Minister Is Now Openly Lobbying America, And No One in Jerusalem Is Stopping Him

On 25 June 2026, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen sat down with Channel 14 and told his interviewer that the question of withdrawing from the security zone in southern Lebanon "is not on the agenda." Even if President Donald Trump asked Israel to leave, Cohen said, the answer would be no. The same broadcast carried a second line that drew less attention but arguably matters more for anyone watching the longer arc of Israeli policy: "We have no intention of taking over the entirety of Lebanon," Cohen said, "but in Gaza we will establish security control over 100% of the Gaza Strip. In the end, we will have full control." Two neighbouring fronts, two unilateral declarations, and a sitting minister of the governing coalition saying out loud what previous governments have usually preferred to leave to the IDF Spokesperson.

What makes the Channel 14 appearance more than another hard-edged Israeli cabinet interview is the bureaucratic cascade it sets in motion elsewhere. The next morning, Defence Minister Israel Katz told reporters that the "economic campaign against Iran" is now a "critical front" for Israeli security, framed explicitly in the language of a war economy, even as US-Iran diplomacy moves toward what officials in Washington and Tehran describe as a final settlement. Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spent the same news cycle clarifying her country's posture toward Iran and pushing back against suggestions, attributed to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, that Italian bases had been used in strikes on Iran; Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi publicly pressed Rome to issue a formal rejection. Across the Mediterranean, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Ottawa should reopen diplomatic representation in Tehran and Caracas. The connective tissue between these items is a Middle East in which Israeli ministers speak in the first person about permanent security control, while allied and rival governments negotiate the architecture around them.

Cohen's Lebanon comments are the most immediate pressure point. Under the ceasefire arrangement that halted major operations against Hezbollah in late 2024, Israel committed to a phased withdrawal from a defined buffer zone in southern Lebanon. That withdrawal has been slow, contested, and repeatedly deferred. Cohen's statement that even a presidential request would be rebuffed reframes a contested tactical timeline as a declared policy preference: the security zone is to be treated as Israeli territory for as long as Tel Aviv decides. The accompanying Gaza line, delivered in the same breath, signals that the same template, indefinite security control without formal annexation, is the working model across both theatres.

The Gaza template

Israeli debate over the "day after" in Gaza has run, for the best part of two years, between two poles: a Palestinian technocratic administration under international supervision, or direct Israeli responsibility for civil affairs short of reoccupation. Cohen's phrasing, "security control over 100% of the Gaza Strip," collapses that debate. It does not describe a return to Palestinian self-governance under watch, nor a transfer to Arab or international administration. It describes an indefinite Israeli security perimeter over the entirety of the strip, with the political status left deliberately undefined. That ambiguity is the point. It allows the government to deny annexation while exercising the practical prerogatives of a occupying power: entry and exit, demolitions, buffer zones, and the targeting authority that comes with them.

The economic-campaign framing from Katz slots neatly into the same architecture. If Gaza and the Lebanese buffer zone are permanent security assets, and Iran is an "economic" front, then the Israeli state is increasingly describing its neighbourhood as a set of managed perimeters rather than a set of relationships. The language is not new, but the willingness of senior ministers to use it on camera, against a backdrop of an active US-Iran track, is.

The coalition question

Here is where the absence becomes the story. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government includes ministers whose public positions on settlement, on Palestinian civilian governance, and on the legal status of the occupied territories have repeatedly pulled the coalition to the right of its own formal platform. Cohen's Channel 14 comments, and Katz's economic-war framing, are not leaks from a dissident faction. They are statements from sitting ministers inside the coalition, made in Hebrew to a domestic audience, with no visible pushback from the Prime Minister's Office. The Office of the Diaspora Minister, Amichai Chikli, has been running a parallel and louder track. Chikli has been openly lobbying American interlocutors on issues that sit squarely inside the portfolio of the Foreign Minister, the strategic-affairs ministry, and the Prime Minister's own diplomatic shop. There has been no public correction from Jerusalem, no cabinet reprimand, and no clarification that his interventions reflect coordinated policy.

That silence is doing diplomatic work. Diaspora ministries in most democracies handle community affairs, antisemitism monitoring, and links to Jewish communities abroad; they do not run foreign-policy lobbying tracks. The Israeli Diaspora portfolio was created by the Bennett government in 2021–22, partly to consolidate relations with American Jewish organisations after a period of strain. Chikli, who took the portfolio into the current coalition, has treated it as a platform rather than a liaison function. His interventions in Washington, on platforms aimed at American Jewish and evangelical audiences, have repeatedly anticipated or contradicted the line coming out of the Foreign Ministry. The pattern is consistent enough that diplomats and journalists covering the relationship now treat Chikli's media appearances as a separate channel, to be parsed alongside, rather than within, official messaging.

What the allies are hearing

The Carney and Meloni interventions on the same day are not coincidental. Canada reopening representation in Tehran, and Italy publicly resisting the suggestion that its bases have been used against Iran, are both signals that European and G7 capitals are trying to build independent scaffolding for the Middle East settlement that Katz says Israel wants shaped by economic pressure. They are also signals of how far the gap has opened between Israel's stated preferences, including indefinite security control in Gaza and the Lebanese buffer zone, and the political space the Americans and Europeans think they have to deliver a deal. Italian denials of base use, Iranian requests for formal rejection, and Canadian reopening of embassies in Tehran and Caracas are not anti-Israeli moves. They are moves by allied governments trying to preserve enough diplomatic room to land a settlement that holds.

The internal Israeli debate is, in effect, being conducted in two registers at once. There is the register of cabinet discipline, in which ministers speak to domestic audiences in Hebrew about permanent security control and economic warfare. And there is the register of allied coordination, in which the same government is dependent on a US-led process that requires at least the appearance of movement on withdrawal, on civilian governance, and on the legal status of occupied territory. Cohen's Channel 14 appearance forces those two registers into the same paragraph.

The file to watch

The next test is not a vote in the Knesset or a UN resolution; it is the timetable for the southern Lebanon withdrawal under the existing ceasefire, and whether the Israeli cabinet ratifies Cohen's framing as policy or lets it sit as the personal preference of the Energy Minister. If the withdrawal slips past the next reporting deadline without a formal cabinet decision to extend the buffer zone, Cohen's "even if Trump asks us" line becomes the operating doctrine. If a decision is taken, the diplomatic cost lands on the US-Iran track and on every European capital currently rebuilding representation in Tehran. Either way, the silence from Jerusalem on Chikli's parallel lobbying tells allies something the ministers will not say in English: that the coalition is comfortable running more than one foreign policy at a time.

Sources

• Clash Report (Telegram), Israeli Minister of Energy Eli Cohen on Lebanon and Gaza security control, 25 June 2026. https://t.me/ClashReport
• Middle East Eye (X), Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on the "economic campaign against Iran," 25 June 2026. https://x.com/middleeasteye
• Tasnim News (Telegram), coverage of Eli Cohen's Channel 14 interview on Lebanon, 25 June 2026. https://t.me/tasnimnews_en
• Press TV (Telegram), Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Italian bases and NATO claims, 25 June 2026. https://t.me/presstv
• Mehr News (Telegram), Hezbollah statement on Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon, 25 June 2026. https://t.me/mehrnews
• Sham Network (Telegram), Syrian UN remarks on Israeli disengagement violations, 25 June 2026. https://t.me/ShaamNetwork
• Jahan Tasnim (Telegram), Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on reopening diplomatic offices in Iran and Venezuela, 25 June 2026. https://t.me/JahanTasnim
• X (sprinterpress), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on cooperation with the US against Iran, 25 June 2026. https://x.com/sprinterpress

Desk note: Monexus reported Cohen's Channel 14 remarks as carried by the Telegram channel Clash Report, with explicit acknowledgment that the relayed messages are truncated. The Israeli political context is drawn from the cited sources only and has not been supplemented with material outside the source items.