The coat is real. The name tag is real. The man wearing them does not exist.

Winner of the 2023 National Jewish Book Award for Hebrew Fiction in Translation, Operation Bethlehem is a gripping espionage thriller about the most dangerous instrument in intelligence work: a man living full-time as someone else.

Daniel Ben Attar was a Mossad undercover spy until a single uncontrolled decision ended his career. Now he walks the wards of a psychiatric hospital in Bethlehem as Jalal, a French volunteer - no handler, no backup, no authorization. Only the conviction that something hidden inside this compound is worth his life to find.
The search is meant to be private. Personal. His alone.

Until it isn't.

Daniel knows every face in the compound. He has no way of knowing which of them already knows his. What began as a private search becomes an intelligence operation run by people who knew more than he did from the first day. Every answer he uncovers changes the mission he thought he was on.

Each ordinary day brings the cover closer to breaking. The enemy he was warned about is not the one most likely to expose him.

How long can a man live as someone else before the false life is the only one he still wants?

"Packed with suspense, emotion, pain, and immense depth... a propulsive thriller." - Lisa Barr, New York Times bestselling author of The Goddess of Warsaw

Espionage from the inside - where the cover is the mission, patience is the tradecraft, and the greatest risk to the operation is the man running it.