HERZLIYA: They're whispering about "terminations" again behind the high walls of Mossad headquarters. But nowadays the term is as likely to refer to staff lay-offs at the Israeli foreign intelligence agency as to assassinating enemies of the Jewish state.

As many as 200 spies, among them several section heads, have quit or been fired in the two years since retired general Meir Dagan took over Mossad with a mandate to hone the hunt for Islamist militants and track Iran's atomic programme.

"Dagan needs to get results, which means emphasis on major missions at the cost of more passive information-gathering," a senior intelligence analyst said. "For some of the old hands, that's just too much to ask."

The shake-up has spawned public squabbles, long unthinkable for the ultra-covert service, with regular media leaks by the Mossad chief's backers and detractors.

Dagan has stayed in the shadows. But an interview he gave while serving as a government counter-terrorism adviser pointed to an approach very different from the back-door diplomacy championed by his Mossad predecessor Efraim Halevy.

"In my opinion, no terrorist should feel immune, anywhere," Dagan told Channel Two television in 1998. "I see a person's life as forfeit the moment he decides to adopt terror tactics."

Such attitudes suit hawkish Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who parachuted Dagan, an army comrade, into Mossad - a break with the tradition of agency apparatchiks assuming the top job.

After Al Qaeda blew up an Israeli-owned hotel and tried to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Kenya in Nov 2002, Sharon ordered Dagan to take the fight to Israel's foes abroad.

Three Lebanese guerrillas and a leading Palestinian militant in Damascus have since died in car-bombings blamed on Mossad. Sharon's office did not deny the allegations. Indeed, Israeli security sources, in an unprecedented admission, took credit for the Syrian assassination last September.

Media reports say Mossad has thwarted four attacks against Israelis abroad, three in Africa and one in Southeast Asia - but without providing details or independent confirmation.

Israeli leaders have also voiced satisfaction with efforts by the agency to boost scrutiny of arch-enemy Iran's atomic reactors. Tehran denies having any hostile design.

"As someone who is privy to the facts but not at liberty to divulge them, I can say with complete authority that, under Meir Dagan, Mossad has been revolutionised in terms of organisation, intelligence and operations," said Ehud Yatom of the Israeli parliamentary panel on secret services.

"And he is far from done." Yet with Israeli prestige battered by Sharon's tough handling of a four-year-old Palestinian revolt, some espionage experts question whether Mossad can afford to revive the deadly missions for which it was famed in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Israel has no capital punishment, but makes little secret of feeling free to kill its enemies abroad. It is a paradox that does not necessarily serve the country well," said Gad Shimron, a former Mossad field agent who now writes on defence issues.

He noted the belief among many Palestinians that their leader Yasser Arafat died in a Paris hospital last month after being poisoned by Mossad. Israel insists it was not involved, and French and Palestinian officials also say there was no evidence of foul play.

IMAGE CONCERNS: Mossad has been under pressure in recent years. The agency was excluded by the United States and Britain from advance information on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's pledge last year to abandon his quest for weapons of mass-destruction.