Refaat Ali Suleiman al-Gammal (; born on July 1, 1927 — died on January 30, 1982), better known for his code name "Raafat al-Haggan" (), was an Egyptian intelligence officer regarded as one of the most prominent agents of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID). He was operating under the alias "Jacques Bitton" (Hebrew: ), and he lived in Israel for 17 years and embedded himself in local society. Egyptian intelligence selected the surname "Bitton" because it is common among Jews of Moroccan and other North African origins, which strengthened the plausibility of his cover.
According to Israeli intelligence records, "Jacques Bitton" was regarded as a highly skilled Egyptian agent. Egypt's official account states that Refaat al-Gammal (Raafat al-Haggan) was sent to Israel in a long operation that began in 1956 and continued into the early 1970s. During this period he ran a tourism business in Tel Aviv, gained social standing, and passed intelligence to Egypt. He was credited for reporting the start date of the 1967 Six-Day War and technical details regarding the Bar Lev Line used in planning for the October 1973 War. He is treated in Egypt as a national figure. Some details of his activities remain classified.
Celebrated in Egypt as a national hero, Raafat al-Haggan's story was contested in Israel. Some Israeli accounts described him as a double agent, a claim Egyptian officials rejected as disinformation. After his mission, he retired, lived in West Germany, and died in 1982. His identity became public when Egyptian state television aired Raafat al-Haggan in 1988, with Mahmoud Abdel Aziz in the lead role. Israeli officials initially dismissed the series as fiction, later acknowledging that Jacques Bitton had spied for Egypt while contending that Israeli security suffered limited damage. Early intelligence statements characterized Egypt's version as a fabricated tale, yet former Mossad chief Isser Harel later said authorities sensed a deep penetration at high levels without suspecting Bitton.
Since 1988, Israeli media have sought to identify Bitton/Al-Haggan. The Jerusalem Post reported that he was Refaat al-Gammal, an Egyptian Jew born in Mansoura in 1919 who arrived in Israel in 1955 and left in 1973. Reports state that he cultivated ties with senior officials, including David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and Ezer Weizman, and that he even considered running for the Knesset. In a later book, The Spies: Israel's Counterintelligence Wars, Eitan Haber and Yossi Melman are cited as confirming many elements of the Egyptian account while adding the claim that he also cooperated with Israeli intelligence and served both sides.
Early life According to the EGID, Refaat Ali Suleiman al-Gammal was born on 1 July 1927 in the city of Damietta, Kingdom of Egypt (nowadays the Arab Republic of Egypt). He was born into a well-off family that worked in the wholesale coal trade. His father, Ali al-Gammal (), was a coal merchant, while his mother, Rateeba Ali Abu Awad (), was a well-educated homemaker from an upper-class background who was fluent in both English and French. Refaat had three siblings: Sami, Labib, and Naziha. After the death of their father in 1936, his elder half-brother Sami took responsibility for supporting the family. Sami worked as a private English tutor for the brothers of Queen Farida, the consort of Egypt's King Farouk, a circumstance that allowed Refaat to be exposed to the English language from an early age. Coupled with his mother's fluency in French, he himself mastered both English and French fluently while still a school student.
After his father's death, Refaat al-Gammal and his family relocated to the Heliopolis district of Cairo, where he spent the remainder of his childhood. From a young age, he was noted for his sharp intelligence and adventurous spirit, though he showed little interest in formal education. According to accounts from those close to him, Refaat was indifferent to academic study and deeply passionate about the arts, especially cinema and theater.
At fourteen, under family pressure and because of his practical interests, he enrolled in a commercial secondary school. During the mid-1940s he followed news of the World War II and expressed admiration for the British war effort. He studied English to near-native fluency with a British accent and improved his French with a Parisian teacher. His interest in acting also grew. On a school visit to a film studio he entered the dressing room of the actor Bishara Wakim, imitated a scene, and received advice to complete his education before pursuing acting, which he later credited with motivating him to finish school. al-Gammal completed a commercial secondary diploma in 1946 and briefly worked in film. He appeared in small roles including in productions with Beshara Wakim. During this period he had a first serious relationship with a teenage dancer named Betty; some sources identify her as the dancer Kitty. Their relationship became serious, and al-Gammal moved in with her, a step at odds with prevailing family and social norms. The decision angered his brother Labib and strained family relations. He later left both Betty and cinema work. Biographical accounts describe him at this stage as socially bold and adept at persuasion, traits later noted in narratives about his intelligence work.
He graduated in 1946 and worked as an accountant for a Red Sea oil company before being dismissed over an allegation of theft. He then held several short-term jobs and became assistant to an accounting officer on the ship Horus, which took him abroad for the first time, with stops in Naples, Genoa, Marseille, Barcelona, Tangier and eventually Liverpool. In Liverpool he joined a tourism firm, later entering the United States without a visa and moving on to Canada and Germany. At the Egyptian consulate in Germany he was accused of selling his passport and denied travel documents, after which German authorities deported him to Egypt. Lacking both employment and identification, he obtained black-market papers under the name "Ali Mostafa" and found work with the Suez Canal company.
After the 1952 revolution, British authorities tightened controls on document fraud. Fearing exposure, al-Gammal left his job, obtained a new forged passport from a Swiss journalist, and used several aliases. In 1953 a British officer detained him en route to Libya while he was carrying a British passport in the name "Danial Caldwell". Believing he might be Israeli, the officer transferred him to Egyptian intelligence. Investigators alleged he had posed as a Jewish officer, "David Artson", and also found checks signed "Refaat al-Gammal", noting his fluent Arabic. Under questioning by officer Hassan Hosny, he disclosed his real identity and described his activities and contacts.
Working for the EGID Recruitment and intelligence work
After confirming his identity, al-Gammal gave a detailed statement to Egyptian authorities. In interviews with officer Hassan Helmy, he said that while working in film he socialized with Egyptian Jews and, using his language skills and knowledge of their customs, and convinced some that he was Jewish. He also described his travel in England, France, and the United States, his repeated use of aliases, and his eventual return to Egypt.
Officer Hassan Hosni placed informants in al-Gammal's cell to learn whether Jewish inmates questioned his identity. They did not. After checking his background, the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate concluded that he had strong skills in impersonation, cover, and social assimilation that could be used in intelligence work. Intelligence officers decided to recruit al-Gammal rather than prosecute him. They told him they needed someone with his skills to live in Israel and move within Jewish communities to gather information on activities hostile to Egypt. Officer Hassan Hosni approached him several times. Al-Gammal was given a choice between imprisonment and working for the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate under a new identity.
In the early 1950s, Israel promoted immigration and capital inflows after its 1948 founding. Egyptian authorities alleged that some wealthy Egyptian Jews were moving large sums out of Egypt to Israel and sought an agent who could enter Jewish circles and identify the financing networks from within. Al-Gammal was told he fit the role. He asked what he would receive in return. Officials offered payment and expungement of his record. All charges linked to his aliases (Ali Mustafa, Charles Dennon, Daniel Caldwell, and others) would be dropped, his confiscated traveler's checks returned, and he would be permitted to adopt a Jewish identity without prosecution.
Al-Gammal agreed to work for the EGID and undertook training in political objectives of the revolution, basic economics and corporate practice, Jewish history and religion, social customs, surveillance photography with miniature cameras, radio communication, intelligence collection, hand-to-hand skills, and explosives. He was taught to distinguish Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities. He then assumed the cover of "Jacques Bitton", an Ashkenazi Jew said to have been born on 23 August 1919 to a French father and an Italian mother, and moved to Alexandria, where he lived in a largely Jewish neighborhood and took a job with an insurance company while building contacts in clandestine circles. Under this identity, he was issued an Israeli passport from Tel Aviv (no. 146742) and was assigned the Egyptian intelligence codename 313.
Infiltration into Israel Accounts differ on who recruited and handled Refaat al-Gammal for insertion into Israel. Some sources credit Hassan Helmy Bulbul, with Abdel Mohsen Faqih as his assistant. Others name Major General Abdel Aziz El-Toudy, who is said to have maintained contact with al-Gammal during the mission. A third view holds that the operation was a team effort rather than the work of a single officer. He began his mission in Egypt by establishing a cover in Alexandria. He lived in a Jewish neighborhood and presented himself as a European Jew from West Germany and northern France. With support from Egyptian intelligence, he secured a position at an insurance company, which helped consolidate the credibility of his identity.
Al-Gammal received help from Levi Salama, an acquaintance from his time in prison, who introduced him to prominent members of Alexandria's Jewish community. These contacts reinforced his credibility and strengthened his cover. After his identity as a foreign Jew in Egypt was fully established, Egyptian intelligence arranged his transfer to Israel via France. He left Alexandria for Paris, then traveled to Tel Aviv on a forged foreign passport, arriving in June 1956, the date later recorded as the start of his long-term operation.
In Tel Aviv, using the name Jacques Bitton, he opened a travel and tourism agency that offered a practical cover for intelligence work. The business brought him into contact with wealthy clients and political figures and gave him legitimate reasons to travel to Europe. During those trips he met Egyptian intelligence officers, passed reports, and received new instructions.
Before leaving for Israel, al-Gammal received $3,000 from Egyptian intelligence to establish himself and traveled via Rome, arriving in 1956 at age 28. In his memoirs, he states that while still in Alexandria he infiltrated Unit 131, a covert cell formed by Avraham Dar for Israeli military intelligence service (Aman), and that he worked with figures later known to Israeli operations, including Marcelle Ninio, Meir Max Bineth, and Eli Cohen.