NAZARETH // Israeli ministers were reported to have emerged from
their weekly Cabinet meeting last month smugly satisfied at the news that the
Hamas official Mahmoud al Mabhouh had been killed in a Dubai hotel room. Those
smiles have turned sour during the past two days.
Yesterday, the finger of suspicion pointed with increasing
confidence at Israel, as Dubai police said they were “99 per cent” certain that
Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, had been involved.
That came as no surprise to most ordinary Israelis, said Uri
Avnery, a veteran peace campaigner and for many years a member of the Israeli
parliament.
“Almost everyone in Israel understands that this was a Mossad
operation,” he said. “Not only that, they are taking great pride in it.”
But if the Israeli public is revelling in the glory of a
successful assassination by its fabled Mossad, the country’s leaders may be less
sanguine at a rapidly unfolding investigation that leads to their door.
In the wake of revelations that the names of seven of the 11
known members of the death squad belonged to Israeli citizens, their identities
apparently stolen, local analysts suggested that this operation was looking like
a potential own-goal.
Several commentators have already called for Meir Dagan, Mossad’s
long-serving head, to resign.
An unnamed “confidant” of Mr Dagan told the Reuters news agency
yesterday that there was no question of his quitting, adding that to do so would
be tantamount to admitting that Israel had carried out the Dubai hit.
But the confidant conceded that the operation had provoked
“anger” towards Israel in a significant number of friendly foreign capitals.
So far, Israel is heading into a diplomatic storm with at least
four countries – Britain, Ireland, France and Germany – over the use of forged
passports to get the hit squad into Dubai. Both Britain and Ireland called in
their local Israeli ambassadors for “clarification” meetings yesterday.
Reports suggested London might punish Israel by cutting off
intelligence sharing, and that Ireland was hoping to set up a joint
investigation with the other three countries affected.
More countries may also have grounds soon for expressing
displeasure: additional members of the team are expected to be identified in the
coming days, and the assassins, it seems, communicated among themselves via a
control centre in Austria.
The Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas,
currently the only potential partner to a deal with Israel, were looking
increasingly exposed too.
Sources in the rival Hamas movement said two Palestinian suspects
extradited from Jordan to Dubai were Fatah security officers who fled Gaza when
Hamas took control in 2007. Fatah officials said the two men, named as Anwar
Shheibar and Ahmad Hasnain, had subsequently defected to Hamas.
In addition, Israel appears to have jeopardised through the
assassination its recent attempts to forge better relations with a number of
Arab states in the hope of building a stronger coalition against Iran.
Those fingering Mossad for the hit draw interesting parallels
with the attempted assassination of the Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in 1997 in
Jordan.
The two Mossad agents who injected Mr Meshaal with poison were
travelling on forged passports too, in this case Canadian. Their capture and
unmasking led to a diplomatic crisis with Canada and damaged relations with
Jordan, one of the few Arab states with which Israel was on reasonable terms.
Another parallel is that in both cases the prime minister was
Benjamin Netanyahu. Critics have accused him of a history of acting recklessly.
Yossi Sarid, who was on the parliamentary
panel that investigated the Meshaal affair, observed yesterday that the inquiry
had shown how “clumsy” Israeli decision-making was. Mr Netanyahu and Mossad
officials, he said, had not asked basic questions, including whether it was wise
to make the Meshaal hit in Jordan. He suggested similar errors had occurred this
time.
An editorial in the liberal Haaretz newspaper, meanwhile, berated
the Israeli government for a number of “negligent mishaps” in the Dubai hit,
which it said had unnecessarily revealed the Mossad’s modus operandi, angered
foreign governments, and exposed Israeli nationals to future risk. “Should all
Jews considering coming to live in Israel from the West be concerned that their
names might be linked with espionage and terror incidents throughout the world?”
Haaretz asked.
Certainly, the use of the identities of Israeli citizens, rather
than foreign nationals, in the operation – making it traceable to Israel –
suggests that Mossad may have been forced to make shortcuts.
Ron Ben Yishai, the security analyst for Yedioth Aharonoth
newspaper, noted that whoever organised the assassination had gone to great
lengths to try to minimise the danger to the Israelis involved by changing as
many details, including document numbers and dates of birth, as they could.
In the past, Mossad has needed a regular supply of genuine
foreign passports to carry out its “false-flag operations”, but obtaining them
has proved to be increasingly difficult. As recently as 2004, two agents were
jailed in New Zealand after they were caught trying to acquire passports.
An era of biometric data and more sophisticated border controls
was making life more difficult for Mossad, said Yossi Melman, Haaretz’s
intelligence reporter.
Mr Avnery observed that, while Israelis were interested in
examining the details of what might have gone wrong in Dubai, they considered
the correctness of the policy itself as self-evident: “No one is asking whether
we want to be a state in which assassination is a major pillar of policy. Do we
want to be a gangster state?”
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