EDITOR: The rolling thunder of the aftermath of the Dubai murder
So now the murder is over, the Mossad is starting to sow the bitter seeds of division between the Palestinian camps; this is obviously an integral part of the whole plan. It seems that in the febrile climate now ruling Israeli society, the doubts and questions about the long term trends of militarised Zionism are now riling the social arena, and will continue to do so. Indeed, it is interesting and also somewhat sad that the death of one Palestinian murdered in Dubai, seems to have given rise to more media interest than the death of over 1400 in Gaza… this is also a mark of the decline of professional standards of the western media: a ‘ripping yarn’, as termed by Seumas Milne below, seems to cristalise media attention much quicker than the quotidian murder of the many, as it is hardly news when coming from Palestine. There is of course, always an exception: The NY Times, that paragon of good news from Israel, has declared the Middle East invisible, so there is nothing at all in the NYT, again! What can one say? Check for yourselves:
http://www.nytimes.com/
Elsewhere, papers can speak of little else, it seems, especially in Israel, but also in Europe and the Arab world. Unbelievably, even the Boston Globe has heard about the murder, but note the quait wording (some… obviously not all, not many, not any of us…):
Some say Mossad behind Dubai hit: Boston Globe
Spy agency tied to assassination of Hamas leader
JERUSALEM – Israeli security officials said yesterday that they were convinced the Mossad was behind the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai, and they harshly criticized the spy agency for allegedly stealing the identities of its own citizens to carry out the hit.
Names released by Dubai matched seven people living in Israel, raising questions about why the agency would endanger its own people by using their passport data as cover for a secret death squad.
At the same time, some observers said the Dubai evidence pointed to a setup to falsely blame Israel.
A vague comment from Israel’s foreign minister, who neither confirmed nor denied Mossad’s involvement, only added to the spy novel-like mystery surrounding the slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was found dead Jan. 20 at a luxury hotel near Dubai’s international airport.
“Israel never responds, never confirms, and never denies,’’ Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in Israel’s first official comment on the affair, then added: “I don’t know why we are assuming that Israel, or the Mossad, used those passports.’’
Some senior Israeli security officials not directly involved in the case were less circumspect, saying they were convinced it was a Mossad operation because of the motive – Israel says al-Mabhouh supplied Gaza’s Hamas rulers with their most dangerous weapons – and the use of Israeli citizens’ identities.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a government order not to discuss the case, characterized the operation as a significant Mossad bungle.
If it develops into a full-blown security scandal, that could harm Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu politically.
Some compared the case with another Mossad embarrassment during Netanyahu’s previous term as prime minister, the failed attempt to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in 1997. Two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists were captured after injecting Mashaal with poison, and Israel was forced to send an antidote that saved Mashaal’s life. Today Mashaal is Hamas’s supreme leader.
Still, there was praise for the Dubai operation from some analysts who noted the major difference between it and the Mashaal case is that the latter failed and the former achieved its goal – assassination of a Hamas leader.
“Al-Mabhouh is dead and all the partners to the operation left Dubai safely,’’ wrote analyst Ronen Bergman of the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
Critics slammed the Mossad, not for killing al-Mabhouh on foreign territory but for doing it sloppily and endangering Israeli citizens in the process. A front-page commentary in Israel’s Haaretz daily by defense analyst Amir Oren called for the ouster of Mossad director Meir Dagan.
“What is needed now is a swift decision to terminate Dagan’s contract and to appoint a new Mossad chief,’’ he wrote. “There’s no disease without a cure.’’
Dubai authorities released names, photos, and passport numbers of 11 members of the alleged hit squad this week, saying all 11 carried European passports. But most of the identities appeared to have been stolen, and at least seven matched up with people in Israel who say they are victims of identity theft.
One is a dual Israeli-British citizen who said one of the numbers matched his own passport, but he had never been to Dubai.
Londres pide explicaciones a Israel por el uso de pasaportes británicos en el asesinato del líder de Hamás: El Pais
Reino Unido, Irlanda y Francia llaman a consulta al embajador.- El jefe del Mossad no dimitirá hasta terminar su mandato.- Dubai asegura que Israel es responsable
Londres y Tel Aviv tensan de nuevo sus relaciones debido a un caso de espionaje de la inteligencia israelí. El Foreign Office ha llamado a consultas al embajador de Israel en Londres, Ron Prosor, para “compartir información” sobre el robo y falsificación de seis pasaportes británicos que terminaron en manos de los presuntos asesinos del líder de Hamás, Mahmud al Mabhuh, después de que en los ochenta otro caso de contraespionaje -esa vez en Alemania- provocase la misma reacción de Reino Unido. También piden explicaciones Irlanda y Francia, que han solicitado otro encuentro con Prosor, según The Irish Times. En mitad de la tormenta diplomática, fuentes cercanas al jefe del Mossad, Meir Dagan, citadas por Reuters, aseguran que el supuesto responsable de la operación de Dubai no abandonará su cargo, a pesar de que la policía dubaití asegura, en un 99%, que Israel está involucrado.
El pasado 20 de enero seis presuntos ciudadanos británicos, tres irlandeses, un alemán y un francés, viajaron en avión hasta los Emiratos Árabes. Se registraron en distintos hoteles de Dubai y localizaron a Mahmud al Mabhuh, fundador de las Brigadas de Al-Qasam (brazo armado de Hamás), con la ayuda de dos ex oficiales de Al Fatah -el partido del presidente palestino Mahmud Abbas- que permanecen detenidos en Jordania, según The Guardian. En 24 horas Mabhuh estaba muerto; envenenado. La investigación de la policía de los emiratos reveló que los 11 asesinos entraron en el país con pasaportes falsos.
Los países europeos implicados mantienen, con resignación, la calma a la hora de apuntar al Gobierno del primer ministro Benjamin Netanyahu, pero, según la prensa británica, los indicios -entre ellos, el modus operandi- apuntan al Mossad. Hay precedentes. En 1987, agentes de la agencia de espionaje israelí robaron y falsificaron pasaportes británicos para llevar a cabo sus actividades. Israel aseguró que el incidente no se iba a repetir.
El problema se intensifica porque en los últimos meses proliferan en la región este tipo de crímenes. Hace dos años, fue asesinado en Damasco, Imad Mugniyeh, jefe militar de Hezbolá. El año pasado, un autobús con peregrinos iraníes explotó también en la capital siria. Se habló entonces de un accidente, aunque algunos foros y expertos aseguraron que miembros de Hamás y agentes iraníes viajaban en ese vehículo. También, meses atrás, un científico nuclear murió tras una explosión a las puertas de su domicilio en Teherán.
La investigación dubaití apunta a la implicación de Israel en el asesinato. “Nuestras investigaciones revelan que el Mossad está involucrado en el asesinato de al Mabhuh. Hay un 99% de posibilidades, no un 100%, de que el Mossad esté detrás”, ha declarado el jefe de la policía, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, al diario The National. “Benjamin Netanyahu, el primer ministro israelí, será el primero en ser perseguido por la Justicia si fuese quien tomó la decisión de matar a al Mabhuh en Dubai y se emitirá una orden de arresto contra él”, ha dicho Tamim.
Pero Londres muestra cautela y no ve pruebas suficientes, tal como apuntó ayer el ministro británico de Exteriores, Avigdor Lieberman, lo que permitirá al jefe de la inteligencia concluir el mandato de ocho años para el que fue elegido en 2002. Sus éxitos en otras misiones contra Hamás, Hezbolá, Siria e Irán son aliciente suficiente para alegar otras “prioridades nacionales” antes que pedir la renuncia de Dagan por un malentendido diplomático, explica un confidente a Reuters. No ocurrió lo mismo con su predecesor, Danny Yatom, que dimitió en 1997 después de que Jordania detuviese a los agentes israelíes, con identidades canadienses, que asesinaron a un líder de Hamás.
Miliband: Israel must ‘cooperate fully’ in fake passport probe: Haaretz
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Thursday demanded Israel’s full cooperation in investigating of the fraudulent use of U.K. passport by the killers of a Hamas official in Dubai.
Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, met with Sir Peter Ricketts, head of the British diplomatic service, on Thursday after London asked him to clarify what it called an “identity theft” in which the passports of six British Israelis were used by assassins.
“The permanent secretary (Ricketts) said we wanted to give Israel every opportunity to share with us what it knows about this incident,” Miliband told British television.
“We hope and expect they will cooperate fully with the investigation that has been launched by the prime minister (Gordon Brown),” he said.
He said he hoped to discuss the issue further with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman when both men were in Brussels on Monday.
A hit squad that killed senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room in January apparently forged travel documents bearing the names of the Britons, who all live in Israel.
“Following an invitation yesterday evening, I met today with Sir Peter Ricketts, Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,” Prosor said following the lunchtime meeting.
“Whilst of course happy to cooperate with Sir Peter’s request, I was unable to shed any further light on the events in question,” Prosor continued.
“In keeping with standard diplomatic practice, it would be improper to disclose the content of such bilateral discussions between our countries.”
Prosor added: “In accordance with accepted diplomatic protocol, it would be unfitting to reveal the content of the talks conducted between the countries.”
Although Jerusalem has not taken responsibility for the January 20 hit on Mabhouh, the incident seems to have spawned a serious diplomatic rift between Israel and the United Kingdom.
Israel’s ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, Zion Evroni, said Wednesday that he too had received a summons from the country’s Department of Foreign Affairs and would be meet Minister Michael Martin on Thursday.
In Jerusalem, Foreign Ministry officials declined to comment on the matter, but an Israeli diplomat said on condition of anonymity that the government has decided to withhold a public statement until the British message is received, and would then choose how to respond.
Israeli officials expressed concern Wednesday that the affair could seriously harm ties between Jerusalem and London. They said the British and Irish summonses could lead to similar steps on the part of France and Germany, other countries whose passports the assailants carried in Dubai.
One Israeli official said the Irish government had already contacted Britain, Germany and France to recommend they conduct a joint investigation into the incident.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised Wednesday that his government would launch an inquiry into the use of the British passports in the operation, but did not cast blame over the alleged forgeries.
“The defrauding of British passports is a very serious issue,” a statement from the Foreign Office released Wednesday read. “The government will continue to take all the action that is necessary to protect British nationals from identity fraud.”
“The government is involved in a number of strands of ongoing activity in relation to this specific case,” the statement said. It cited three specific areas of activity: offering bureaucratic assistance to the affected British citizens living in Israel, investigating the matter fully and summoning the Israeli ambassador for clarification.
“The Serious Organised Crime Agency will lead this investigation, in close cooperation with the Emirati authorities,” the Foreign Office said.
Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs released a statement indicating, “the identities of the persons recorded on the forged passports do not correspond to those recorded on the valid passports carrying the same numbers.”
Emirati police said the team left Dubai several hours after the operation – some individually and others in pairs – for destinations in Europe, Asia and Africa.
At a memorial rally for Mabhouh in Gaza Wednesday, leaders of Hamas’ armed wing said the group “will never rest until they reach his killers”.
Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal addressed the rally of several thousand by video link from Damascus.
“We call on European countries to punish Israel’s leaders for violating laws,” he said. “Israel deserves to be placed on the terror list.”
Meurtre d’un cadre du Hamas: Israël espère éviter une crise avec Londres: L’Express
Israël veut apaiser jeudi les tensions diplomatiques avec Londres. Le noeud du problème: l’utilisation de passeports britanniques par les assassins présumés du cadre du Hamas tué en janvier.
Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh
Selon les autorités israéliennes, est l’un des principaux responsables d’un trafic d’armes iraniennes à destination de Gaza, contrôlé par le Hamas
Les ambassadeurs d’Israël à Londres et à Dublin ont été “invités” au Foreign Office et au ministère irlandais des Affaires étrangères. Ils doivent s’expliquer sur l’utilisation de “faux passeports britanniques” par des membres du commando accusé d’avoir tué un cadre du Hamas. Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh a été assassiné le 20 janvier à Dubaï.
La radio de l’armée israélienne a expliqué que le ministère des Affaires étrangères attendait avec une certaine fébrilité les résultats de la rencontre de Londres. “Le ministère espère que cette affaire s’achèvera par cette discussion”, a ajouté la radio.
Selon des responsables cités par la radio, il est prématuré de parler de crise diplomatique avec Londres tant qu’il n’y aura pas de “preuves irréfutables” liant Israël à ce crime.
Faux passeports?
Selon la police de Dubaï, 11 personnes munies de passeports européens (trois Irlandais, six Britanniques, un Français et un Allemand) sont recherchées pour l’assassinat de Mabhouh.
Le militant du Hamas, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, arrivant à son hôtel à Dubaï, le 15 février 2010.
Cependant, cette même police a affirmé que les passeports européens utilisés n’étaient pas des faux. La presse israélienne considère que le commando aurait vraisemblablement usurpé l’identité d’au moins 7 Israéliens, détenteurs de nationalité étrangère.
A Londres, le Premier ministre Gordon Brown a annoncé mercredi l’ouverture d’une enquête.
Le ministre des affaires étrangères israélien, Avigdor Lieberman a tenu à apaiser les tensions: “Je crois que la Grande-Bretagne reconnaît qu’Israël est un pays responsable et que nos activités en matière de sécurité sont menées en vertu de règles du jeu très claires, prudentes et responsables. Nous n’avons donc aucune raison d’être inquiets”, a-t-il ajouté.
Cette affaire place également Israël dans le collimateur de l’Autriche qui soupçonne le commando d’avoir utilisé des cartes SIM et numéros de portable autrichiens.
Assassinat de Dubaï : la police accuse le Mossad: Le Nouvel Observaeur
Alors qu’Israël maintient le flou sur l’éventuelle implication de son service secret dans l’assassinat d’un membre fondateur du Hamas, la police de Dubaï l’accuse d’être à l’origine de l’attentat.
Combattant du Hamas. Le mouvement palestinien a accusé Israël d’avoir assassiné à Dubaï un de ses chefs militaires, Mahmoud Al Mabhouh. (Reuters)
L’enquête sur l’assassinat d’un cadre du Hamas à Dubaï a montré que le Mossad israélien “est à 99%, sinon 100%” derrière ce crime, a déclaré jeudi 18 février le chef de la police de Dubaï.
“Notre enquête a révélé que le Mossad est impliqué dans le meurtre de [Mahmoud] al-Mabhouh. Il est certain à 99%, sinon à 100% que le Mossad est derrière l’assassinat”, a déclaré le général Dhahi Khalfan à l’édition en ligne du journal The National, relevant du gouvernement d’Abou Dhabi.
“Les indices dont dispose la police de Dubaï montre un lien clair entre les suspects et des gens qui ont des relations directes avec Israël”, a-t-il ajouté.
Le Mossad, le service secret israélien, a été pointé du doigt par le mouvement islamiste palestinien Hamas dans l’assassinat de Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, pourvoyeur d’armes pour ce mouvement et l’un des fondateurs de sa branche armée.
Mabhouh, 50 ans, a été tué le 20 janvier dans un hôtel de Dubaï.
Les ambassadeurs d’Israël convoqués
Alors qu’Israël, maintient le flou sur l’éventuelle implication de son service secret, les ambassadeurs d’Israël à Londres et à Dublin ont été convoqués au Foreign Office et au ministère irlandais des Affaires étrangères pour s’expliquer sur l’utilisation de faux passeports britanniques et irlandais lors de l’attentat, a annoncé le chef de la diplomatie irlandaise, Micheal Martin. Paris a, de son coté, “demandé des explications à l’ambassade d’Israël” sur les circonstances de l’utilisation du faux passeport français.
Le ministre irlandais, qui s’exprimait à la radio-télévision RTE, a déclaré que l’utilisation de faux passeports dans le cadre de l’assassinat de Mahmoud Abdel Raouf Al-Mabhouh constituait “un incident extrêmement sérieux”.
“Nous avons demandé à l’ambassadeur d’Israël de venir au ministère des Affaires étrangères aujourd’hui afin de parler”, a dit le ministre.
“Nous entendons poser des questions tout à fait directes et solliciter une assistance et des éclaircissements”, a-t-il ajouté.
La police de Dubaï avait annoncé le 15 février que onze personnes munies de passeports européens (trois Irlandais, six Britanniques, un Français et un Allemand) étaient recherchées dans le cadre de l’assassinat de Mabhouh.
Cependant, jeudi, le chef de la police de Dubaï, le général Dhahi Khalfan, a indiqué que les passeports des membres du commando “n’avaient pas fait l’objet de falsifications”. Dublin, de son côté assure que les passeports étaient des faux.
“Nous prenons l’affaire extrêmement sérieusement”, a indiqué Michael Martin, en assurant que “la loi s’appliquerait dans toute sa rigueur” à l’encontre des responsables d’un éventuel détournement des passeports.
‘Dubai police chief 99% sure Israel behind Hamas killing’: Haaretz
Haaretz names Gazans arrested in Amman over assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said he is 99 percent sure Israel was involved in the January killing of a Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai luxury hotel, according to a report published Thursday in an Emirati newspaper.
“Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al-Mabhouh. It is 99 percent, if not 100 percent, that Mossad is standing behind the murder,” Tamim told The National newspaper.
Haaretz earlier Thursday learned the identities of two Palestinians arrested in Jordan in connection with the January 20 killing at a Dubai hotel.
Ahmad Hasnin, a Palestinian intelligence operative, and Anwar Shekhaiber, an employee of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, were arrested in the Jordanian capital Amman.
Jordan on Tuesday confirmed it had extradited the two to Dubai.
The two were residents of the Gaza Strip until Hamas seized control there in 2007, a Hamas source told Haaretz.
Both moved to Dubai, where they were employed by a real estate company belonging to a senior official of Fatah, the political faction headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
A third man, a Hamas security operative, is under arrest in Syria on suspicion of having assisted the hit squad, the British daily The Guardian reported late Wednesday.
Palestinian sources in the Gulf said Nahro Massoud was in detention and under interrogation in Damascus, the Guardian reported.
Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal has denied the allegation, according to the report, saying “It is not correct at all”.
But Palestinian sources insisted Massoud was being questioned amid speculation that potentially senior Palestinian defectors may have been involved in the plot.
Dubai to hand retina scans to Interpol’
Dubai police said Wednesday investigators had successfully recreated a detailed picture of the operation. The official Web site of the Dubai police featured the suspects’ pictures and personal information in an effort to locate the assailants.
According to Palestinian news agency Ma’an, Dubai police said Wednesday that they hold retinal scans of the suspected assassins, which they plan to publish through international police intelligence service Interpol.
Airport officials carried out routine retinal scans on 11 suspects sought by Dubai when they entered the country in the days before the hit. An unnamed Dubai official said on Thursday that the investigation has now widened, with police seeking a further seven members of the assassination team – making 18 in all.
Dubai police also identified Austria as the “command center” for the assassins, after mobile phone data showed at least seven numbers originating there, the Guardian reported.
Dubai police speculated members of the group communicated using “encrypted” messages, and that contact was maintained via several Austrian mobile phone Sim cards.
Austria has confirmed its officials are investigating the claims.
Le Dubaïgate du Mossad: Le Monde
Des lunettes, une fausse moustache et un chapeau… Les membres du commando qui ont assassiné, le 20janvier, dans un hôtel de Dubaï, le Palestinien Mahmoud Abou Al-Mabhouh, considéré comme le principal responsable de l’approvisionnement en armes du Hamas, n’ont pas trouvé mieux comme parade aux caméras de surveillance dont l’émirat a truffé ses bâtiments publics et ses hôtels, ce qu’ils ne pouvaient ignorer.
Les onze suspects auraient donc pris un risque calculé, celui de voir leurs visages, sans doute grimés, faire le tour du monde, en tablant que cette piste ne serait pas suffisante pour remonter jusqu’à eux, pas plus que celle des identités usurpées figurant sur leurs passeports. Les images rassemblées par la police de Dubaï montrent plusieurs membres du commando déambulant dans les couloirs de l’Hôtel Al-Bustan Rotana, certains vêtus d’un short, raquette de tennis à la main, apparemment sereins…
Qui étaient-ils ? Tout en se protégeant, pour des raisons patriotiques et de censure, derrière le fameux “AFMR” (according to foreign media reports, “selon la presse étrangère”), la plupart des journaux israéliens ne doutent pas de la responsabilité du Mossad, le service israélien chargé du renseignement extérieur, mais stigmatisent l’amateurisme des agents ayant mené cette opération, voire celle de leurs chefs.
Le ministre israélien des affaires étrangères, Avigdor Lieberman, est bien le seul à oser dire qu’il n’y a “aucune raison de penser” que le Mossad est à l’origine de l’assassinat d’un homme qui figurait en tête de la liste des individus dangereux qu’Israël souhaitait éliminer. M. Lieberman tente de sauver ce qui peut encore l’être de la discrétion habituelle du “kidon”, le service action de l’une des agences de renseignement réputées les plus performantes du monde.
TROIS FAUTES LOURDES
Il est probable que le chef du Mossad, Meir Dagan, en poste depuis huit ans, va endosser le rôle de bouc émissaire, tant l’opération de Dubaï s’est accompagnée de fautes lourdes. La première est sans doute d’avoir choisi d’assassiner un responsable du Hamas dans l’un des rares pays arabes avec lequel Israël entretient une relation sans nuages.
La seconde est d’avoir fourni aux membres du commando des passeports de pays européens (Royaume-Uni, Irlande, Allemagne et France), ce qui, en principe, ne se fait pas entre pays amis. A Londres comme à Dublin, l’ambassadeur d’Israël a été convoqué au ministère des affaires étrangères pour fournir des explications.
La troisième est d’avoir usurpé l’identité de sept Israéliens, dont six ont la double nationalité britannique. Les intéressés ont trouvé une forêt de micros et de caméras pour s’en plaindre. Michael Barney, James Clarke, Jonathan Graham, Stephen Hodes, Paul Keeley, Melvyn Mildine et les autres n’ont pas apprécié d’être assimilés à des meurtriers.
L’un s’est dit “profondément choqué”, un autre s’est déclaré “furieux, bouleversé et effrayé”, un troisième a dénoncé “un vol d’identité”… La sophistication des mesures de contrôle dans les aéroports et la prochaine généralisation des passeports biométriques rend de plus en plus aléatoire la fourniture de fausses identités aux agents de renseignement.
RETOMBÉES POLITIQUES ET DIPLOMATIQUES
D’où le souci des services de se procurer de vrais passeports et d’emprunter de vraies identités. En 2004, c’est pour avoir été pincés en tentant d’acheter des passeports que deux agents du Mossad ont été emprisonnés pendant six mois en Nouvelle-Zélande.
Cette cascade de conséquences pour une opération censée être menée dans la discrétion va inévitablement poser la question de la responsabilité du premier ministre israélien, Benyamin Nétanyahou. Alors que le succès factuel de cette mission – la “cible” a été éliminée et les membres du commando ont pu quitter l’émirat – est déjà obscurci par ses retombées politiques et diplomatiques, une chose est sûre: une opération aussi risquée ne peut avoir été décidée sans son feu vert.
Si la piste du Mossad devait se confirmer – elle ne le sera jamais complètement –, il vaudrait mieux, pour le premier ministre israélien, qu’il ait été tenu dans l’ignorance des détails de la mission. Car il n’y avait sans doute pas de moyen plus direct de pointer du doigt la responsabilité du Mossad que de choisir, sur les onze membres du commando, l’identité de sept citoyens israéliens!
M. Nétanyahou n’a décidément pas de chance avec le Mossad. Lors de son premier mandat de premier ministre, en septembre 1997, ce même service avait lamentablement échoué dans une tentative d’empoisonnement, en Jordanie, de Khaled Meshaal, aujourd’hui chef de la branche politique du Hamas. Les deux agents du service action (munis de passeports canadiens) avaient été arrêtés par la sécurité jordanienne. Israël avait dû fournir un antidote et libérer le chef spirituel du Hamas pour récupérer ses hommes.
Ironie du calendrier : des responsables du Mossad et du Shin Bet (sécurité intérieure) ont fait une rare entorse à leur discrétion, lundi 15 février, en participant à un débat à la Knesset – le Parlement israélien – sur la revalorisation de leurs salaires et de leurs retraites. Aucune décision n’a été prise. Probablement pour quelque temps…
Palestinians held over Dubai killing worked for top Fatah official: Haaretz
Haaretz names Gazans arrested in Amman for alleged role in assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month.
Haaretz has learned the identities of two Palestinians arrested in Jordan in connection with the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.
Ahmad Hasnin, a Palestinian intelligence operative, and Anwar Shekhaiber, an employee of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, were arrested in the Jordanian capital Amman.
The two were residents of the Gaza Strip until Hamas seized control there in 2007, a Hamas source told Haaretz.
Both moved to Dubai, where they were employed by a real estate company belonging to a senior official of Fatah, the political faction headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
A third man, a Hamas security operative, is under arrest in Syria on suspicion of having assisted the hit squad, the British daily The Guardian reported late Wednesday.
Palestinian sources in the Gulf said Nahro Massoud was in detention and under interrogation in Damascus, the Guardian reported.
Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal has denied the allegation, according to the report, saying “It is not correct at all.”
But Palestinian sources insisted Massoud was being questioned amid speculation that potentially senior Palestinian defectors may have been involved in the plot.
Dubai police announced Wednesday that their inquiry into the assassination of Mabhouh is focusing on bringing to trial the suspected perpetrators of the killing.
They said investigators had successfully recreated a detailed picture of the operation. The official Web site of the Dubai police featured the suspects’ pictures and personal information in an effort to locate the assailants.
According to Palestinian news agency Ma’an, Dubai police said Wednesday that they hold retinal scans of the suspected assassins, which they plan to publish through international police intelligence service Interpol.
Airport officials carried out routine retinal scans on 11 suspects sought by Dubai when they entered the country in the days before the hit. An official source in Britain said that the investigation has now widened, with police seeking a further six members of the assassination team – making 17 in all.
Dubai police also identified Austria as the “command center” for the assassins, after mobile phone data showed at least seven numbers originating there, the Guardian reported.
Dubai police speculated members of the group communicated using “encrypted” messages, and that contact was maintained via several Austrian mobile phone Sim cards.
Austria has confirmed its officials were investigating the claims.
Troubling questions from Dubai: Haaretz
If Israel is behind last month’s assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, it may be assumed that anybody who tried to appropriate some of the glory regrets it now. Dubai’s police investigation may present the Israeli government and intelligence community with tough questions, even if the government did not take responsibility for the assassination, which the foreign press attributes to the Mossad. What at first seemed like a “clean” operation turned out to be wracked by negligent mishaps.
First of all, did the goal and outcome justify the risk of carrying out a hit in a moderate Arab country and of exposing the intelligence community’s modus operandi? Or did the operational opportunity to get rid of an individual responsible for past terror attacks and current weapons smuggling encourage those who approve and carry out such actions to waive some of the rules of caution?
Second, in a tense period in which Israel is trading threats of war with Iran and its allies in the region, should Israel be goading the enemy instead of maintaining restraint?
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Third, is it right, because of this hit, to embarrass the authorities in the United Arab Emirates, who share with Israel the fear of the Iranian threat? Fourth, in preparation for the operation, were the risks of exposure and restrictions on similar future actions taken into account?
Fifth, is there justification in damaging relations with friendly European countries whose passports were used by Mabhouh’s assassins?
Sixth, is it proper to place in harm’s way the Israelis whose identities were ostensibly stolen and used by the assassins? The fear of identity theft recalls dark regimes, and such an action seems to do disproportionate damage.
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? Stricter security rules at airports and border crossings make things harder on the intelligence services. But does the response require endangering the liberty, and perhaps even the lives, of civilians whose identities were used without their knowledge in a secret operation?
All these questions, particularly the claims of identity theft, need to be closely scrutinized. Lessons must be learned for the future, and the findings must be exposed to the light of day.
Robert Fisk: Britain’s explanation is riddled with inconsistencies. It’s time to come clean: The Independent
How could the Arabs pick up on a Mossad killing, if that is what it was? Well, we shall see
Collusion. That’s what it’s all about. The United Arab Emirates suspect – only suspect, mark you – that Europe’s “security collaboration” with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel’s enemies. At 3.49pm yesterday afternoon (Beirut time, 1.49pm in London), my Lebanese phone rang. It was a source – impeccable, I know him, he spoke with the authority I know he has in Abu Dhabi – to say that “the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?”
The voice – I know the man and his origins well – wants to talk. “There are 18 people involved in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Besides the 11 already named, there are two Palestinians who are being interrogated and five others, including a woman. She was part of the team that staked out the hotel lobby.” Two hours later, an SMS arrives on my Beirut phone from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It is the same source.
“ONE MORE THING,” it says in capital letters, then continues in lower case. “The command room of the operation was in Austria (sic, in fact, all things are “sic” in this report)… meaning the suspects when here did not talk to each other but thru the command room on separate lines to avoid detection or linking themselves to one another… but it was detected and identified OK??” OK? I ask myself.
My source is both angry and insistent. “We have sent out details of the 11 named people to Interpol. Interpol has circulated them to 188 countries – but why hasn’t Britain warned foreign nations that these people are using passports in these names?” There was more to come.
“We have identified five credit cards belonging to these people, all issued in the United States.” The man will not give the EU nationalities of the extra five – this would make two women involved in Mr Mabhouh’s murder. He said that EU countries were cooperating with the UAE, including the UK. But “not one of the countries we have been speaking to has notified Interpol of the passports used in their name. Why not?”
The source insisted that one of the names on a passport – the name of a man who denies any knowledge of its use – has travelled on it in Asia (probably Indonesia) and EU countries over the past year. The Emirates have proof that an American entered their country in June 2006 on a British passport issued in the name of a UK citizen who was already in prison in the Emirates. The Emirates claim that the passport of an Israeli agent sent to kill a Hamas leader in Jordan was a genuine Canadian passport issued to a dual national of Israel.
Intelligence agencies – who in the view of this correspondent are often very unintelligent – have long used false passports. Oliver North and Robert McFarlane travelled to Iran to seek the release of US hostages in Lebanon on passports that were previously stolen from the Irish embassy in Athens. But the Emirates’ new information may make some European governments draw in their breath – and they had better have good replies to the questions. Intelligence services – Arab, Israeli, European or American – often adopt an arrogant attitude towards those from whom they wish to hide. How could the Arabs pick up on a Mossad killing, if that is what it was? Well, we shall see.
Collusion is a word the Arabs understand. It speaks of the 1956 Suez War, when Britain and France cooperated with Israel to invade Egypt. Both London and Paris denied the plot. They were lying. But for an Arab Gulf country which suspects its former masters (the UK, by name) may have connived in the murder of a visiting Hamas official, this is apparently now too much. There is much more to come out of this story. We will wait to see if there are any replies in Europe.
Israel reels from backlash at killing of Hamas militant: The Independent
Both the audacity and the competence of Mossad are being questioned after the latest episode in the agency’s colourful history
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
After the excitement at a story worthy of Hollywood, the political fallout. Sharp questions are starting to be asked in Israel about an operation which left the physical appearance of the assassins exposed, appeared to have usurped the identities of, and perhaps even endangered, uninvolved Israeli citizens, and risked a serious diplomatic backlash because of the operatives’ use of European passports to enter Dubai.
If the assassination, as seems probable despite the plea of “no evidence” by Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday, involved the country’s overseas intelligence agency, Mossad, it will not of course be the first time it has hit trouble over its use of foreign passports. In 2005, two Israelis were convicted of fraudulently trying to obtain New Zealand passports. When the government in Auckland secured an apology from the Israeli authorities it regarded that in itself as proof that the two men were acting on behalf of the Jewish state.
Although there was no immediate UK confirmation yesterday, the Israeli press also reported that Israel was obliged to apologise when British passports the agency had been using were left in a phone booth in West Germany in 1987. Ten years later, Canada protested over the use of its passports in the famously botched attempt to assassinate the Hamas political bureau head Khaled Meshal in Amman – a failure which led at Jordan’s insistence to the Gaza Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin being freed from jail.
The latest hit was not a repeat of the failed attempt on Mr Meshal. In Dubai, the assassins got their man, identified as a key figure in the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry from Iran and the murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989. But the disclosure by Dubai police of the details of the operation has triggered two sets of potential ramifications.
The first is domestic – the use of the names of apparently unsuspecting Israeli citizens who are dual-passport holders, and who appeared last night to have little obvious redress from official circles. This may be the easiest for Israel, assuming it is responsible, to see off. Zahava Gal-On, the leftist former Knesset member, protested yesterday at the “idiotic” assumption of the identities of real people, but Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, said he saw no reason for a parliamentary investigation. He argued it was not a problem for the government, and advised the people affected to hire a lawyer if they were worried.
In this the political establishment is helped by Israel’s ambiguity towards Mossad, reminiscent of its approach to its nuclear arsenal. Like its nearest British equivalent, MI6, Mossad is “avowed”; its head, currently Meir Dagan, is known, and it has its own website. The sober tones with which Ha Mossad (literally “the institution”) lists the activities it is mandated to carry out – including “planning and carrying out special operations beyond Israel’s borders” – do little justice to the fearsome reputation it has built up since it was formed in 1949 by David Ben Gurion.
That reputation has been enhanced by Mossad’s many well-known operational successes, including the smuggling of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichman to Israel for trial in 1960, the intelligence which led to the air strike on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, the spiriting of the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu back from London in 1986, and the assassination of various Palestinian militants abroad. Neverthless, there are few opportunities for vigorous political debate on its activities; as Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, said yesterday about the operation, “Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies.”
That said, the diplomatic fall-out may be less easy to contain. Among sharply critical commentators, Ben Caspit of Maariv criticised the operation for failing to take account of its likely exposure. While Mr Caspit was largely attacking Mossad for being caught out, he concluded by remarking that “it is not certain that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was worth all this”. Amir Oren went further, calling for Mr Dagan’s removal, and warning of an impending “diplomatic crisis” with “countries whose passports were used by the assassins”. Assuming that the British investigation ordered by Gordon Brown is serious and finds Mossad responsible, and that other countries including the UK knew nothing of the Dubai operation, then Israel is unlikely to have heard the last of it.
EDITOR: The continued shock-waves of the murder in Dubai
The poisonous eddies radiating outward from Israel after the Dubai murder, seem to further prove the sea-change, after the Gaza carnage. Israeli brutalities, illegalities and continued oppression of the Palestinians, accepted for so long as some god-given right, or a strange kind of natural disaster, one to be regretted but always overlooked, are now no longer seen as such, but as the Israeli-made disaster of cogent, if brutal colonial policies in Jerusalem, broadly accepted and backed in Israel by a docile and divided polity, which has lost its human compass. Without any prophetic skills, one can foresee the continued decline in support for this racist, immoral and increasingly illogical brutal regime of occupation, across the globe, and an environment in which every ?success? of the Israeli military machine is indeed a deep and radiating failure, another faultline in the thin ice on which Israel has been skating for so long.
The fact that civil society in Israel – the political parties, the media, academia, the arts and professions ? are still very strongly in support of whatever their government is concocting, is indeed a mark of the deep sickness of the Israeli polity. While is reminds one of South African whites a the height of apartheid, it is obviously much more far-reaching and its implications are far wider than those of apartheid. While apartheid south Africa was behind much of African in-fighting during some decades, the apartheid policy was never hellbent on expelling the black population; it was content to oppress and exploit them. The Zionist colonising agenda is a completely different one, a more extreme and finite approach. It would be unfortunately correct to point out that the Jewish population of Israel, and most Jews elsewhere, have bought into this toxic mix of racism and nationalism, peppered as it is with religious fundamentalism to boot. This was also either overlooked or even embraced by other countries, as their elite saw in Israel a bulwark against sprawling Islam, in a typical, orientalist mindset. There are now serious signs that this whole edifice is crumbling.
The important variant on South Africa is the global field in which Israel is batting, being a bridesmaid of entrenched conflicts, and the catalyst of western military intervention just about everywhere; Iran is just one example where the war prepared against a country which MAY in the future have nuclear weapons, is whipped into frenzy by a country that has had them for decades. Will the western nations continue to follow Israeli dogma like lemmings?
The above was posted on the Guardian CiF comments page of Seamus Milne’s article:
This is no ripping yarn, but a murder to fan more conflict: The Guardian
The media may revel in a Mossad hit, yet Britain’s response to a plot that could threaten its own citizens has been craven
Seumas Milne
Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost unversally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state. Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or stolen passports of citizens of four European states, including Britain, with dual Iranian nationality.
You can be sure it would have triggered a major international storm, stentorian declarations about the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, and perhaps a debate at the UN security council, with demands for harsher sanctions against an increasingly dangerous Islamic republic.
Substitute Israel for Iran, and the first part of that scenario is exactly what happened in Dubai last month. A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was murdered in his hotel room in what was widely assumed from the start to be an operation by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Less than a month later, strong suspicion has turned to as good as certainty with the revelation that the hit team had used the passport identities of six Britons with dual nationality and currently living in Israel.
But instead of setting off a diplomatic backlash, the British government sat on its hands for almost a week after it was reportedly first passed details of the passport abuse. And while the Foreign Office finally summoned the Israeli ambassador to “share information”, rather than protest, Gordon Brown could yesterday only promise a “full investigation”.
In parallel with this languid official response, most of the British media has treated the assassination more as a ripping spy yarn than a bloody scandal which has put British citizens at greater risk by association with Mossad death squads. It was an “audacious hit”, the Daily Mail enthused, straight out of a “Frederick Forsyth page-turner”, while the Times revelled in an attack that resembled nothing so much as a “well-plotted murder mystery”.
Running throughout all this is a breathless awe at Mossad’s reputation for ruthless brilliance in seeking out and destroying Israel’s enemies. In reality, the Dubai operation was badly bungled, as the Israeli press has already started to acknowledge. Despite having the relatively easy target of an unarmed man in a luxury hotel in a non-hostile Gulf state, Mossad managed to get its agents repeatedly caught on CCTV and effectively exposed Israel’s responsibility through the hamfisted passport scam.
Dubai follows a long history of Mossad bungles, from its accidental 1970s killing of a Moroccan waiter in Norway, mistaken for a Palestinian Black September leader, through its failed assassination attempt against the Hamas leader Khalid Mish’al in Jordan in 1997, when agents had to take refuge in Israel’s embassy and the US forced Israel to produce the antidote for the nerve toxin used in the attack.
In that case, the would-be assassins were carrying the Canadian passports of Israeli citizens, apparently with their knowledge. But while Mossad has used British documents in other attacks, it has naturally steered clear of faking the passports of its US sponsor. So at the same time as Israel is demanding the British government change the law without delay to prevent the arrest of visiting Israeli leaders on war crimes charges, what is Britain planning to do over the abuse of its citizens’ identity to carry out state-directed murder?
Very little, it seems. Part of the explanation has to be that Britain and the US have of course been carrying out their own assassination campaigns, in violation of the laws of war, in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his new book on secret SAS operations in occupied Iraq, Mark Urban estimates that 350 to 400 were killed in covert British attacks. The Joint Special Operations Command run by General Stanley McChrystal, now US commander in Afghanistan, was responsible for perhaps 3,000 deaths. In Pakistan, US drone assassination attacks are now routinely carried out against Taliban and al-Qaida targets, real or imagined.
And since launching its war on terror, the US has also adopted Israel’s practice, stretching back decades, of carrying out killings far from the theatre of war. First, Israel’s attacks were targeted against PLO leaders; more recently against the Islamists. But since the fiasco of the Mish’al plot, its assassinations have mostly been confined to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Israel made a determined attempt over the past decade to decapitate Hamas of its entire leadership.
Now that focus has again widened. Under the direction of Mossad director Meir Dagan, Israel is running a region-wide underground war against the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas – which have both maintained an effective ceasefire for more than a year – and their Syrian and Iranian backers. Since the killing of veteran Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008, Israeli-hallmarked assassinations have multiplied in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
But coldblooded killing isn’t only a morally repugnant crime. The lesson of colonial history is that decapitation campaigns against national resistance movements don’t work. In the short term they can disrupt and demoralise, but if the movement is socially rooted, other leaders or even organisations will take their place. That was Israel’s experience when it killed the Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi and his family in the early 1990s, only for him to be succeeded by the more effective and charismatic Hassan Nasrallah.
Such campaigns also tend to spread the war. Unlike the historic PLO factions, Hamas has always confined its armed attacks to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Writing in the Guardian in 2007, Mish’al confirmed the “principle that the resistance should only be fought in Palestine”. But in the aftermath of the Dubai assassination, Hamas leaders have started to hint strongly that policy could now change, and that they could respond to Israel’s attacks in “the international arena”.
If so, it would give an added dimension to the assessment by Ben Caspit in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv yesterday that the Dubai killing had been a “tactical operational success, but a strategic failure”. So far the response of British ministers to Mossad’s provocation has been craven. Unless that changes fast, they can only increase the risk of being drawn further into a conflict ready to erupt again at any time.
UK calls in Israeli ambassador as Dubai killing row escalates: The Guardian
Relations in Tel Aviv now in ‘deep freeze’, say British officials
Britain last night fired the first shot in a potentially explosive diplomatic row with Israel by calling in the country’s ambassador to explain the use of faked British passports by a hit squad who targeted a Hamas official in Dubai.
The Israeli ambassador has been summoned to the Foreign Office to “share information” about the assassins’ use of identities stolen from six British citizens living in Israel, as part of the meticulously orchestrated assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Britain has stopped short of accusing Israel of involvement, but to signal its displeasure, the Foreign Office ignored an Israeli plea to keep the summons secret. “Relations were in the freezer before this. They are in the deep freeze now,” an official told the Guardian.
Gordon Brown yesterday launched an investigation into the use of the fake passports, which will be led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca). The British embassy in Tel Aviv is also contacting the British nationals affected in the plot, “and stands ready to provide them with the support that they need”, the Foreign Office said in a statement last night.
“The British passport is an important part of being British and we have to make sure everything is done to protect it,” Brown told LBC Radio yesterday.
Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, insisted there was no proof that the Mossad was involved in Mabhouh’s killing in a Dubai hotel last month, but added that Israel had a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence matters.
However, there were calls in Israel for an internal government inquiry into whether the Mossad was responsible for identity theft from dual nationals, and criticism of its chief, Meir Dagan, for what critics described as a clumsy operation that risked alienating European allies.
“What began as a heart attack turned out to be an assassination, which led to a probe, which turned into the current passport affair,” a columnist, Yoav Limor, wrote in Israel Hayom, a pro-government newspaper. “It is doubtful whether this is the end of the affair.”
Israel’s ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, will meet Peter Ricketts, head of the diplomatic service and the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office.
Yesterday more details emerged about the assassination plot:
• The Guardian learned that a key Hamas security official is under arrest in Syria on suspicion of having helped the assassins identify Mabhouh as their target.
• Reports that the hit squad could have been bigger than the 11 suspects named by the Dubai police appear to have been confirmed by surveillance pictures showing other possible accomplices, including a second woman.
• Authorities in Vienna have begun an investigation into whether Austria was used as a logistical hub for the operation, after seven of the mobile phones used by the killers had Austrian SIM cards.
• Three of the killers entered Dubai with forged Irish passports that had numbers lifted from legitimate travel documents.
It is not the first British-Israeli row over the misuse of British passports. British officials are particularly angry because the Israeli government pledged that there would be no repeat of an incident in 1987, in which Mossad agents acquired and tampered with British passports.
Lieberman said he believed that relations with Britain would not be damaged. “I think Britain recognises that Israel is a responsible country and that our security activity is conducted according to very clear, cautious and responsible rules of the game. Therefore we have no cause for concern,” he said.
However, the former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, a member of the Commons foreign affairs committee, welcomed the decision to confront the Israeli government directly. He said: “If the Israeli government was party to behaviour of this kind it would be a serious violation of trust between nations.”
France yesterday also claimed that the French passport used by one of the assassins had been forged. A source close to the French intelligence services told Reuters a French passport which Dubai said had been used in the operation had a valid number but incorrect name. “It was a very good fake,” the source said.
Hamas, meanwhile, vowed vengeance for Mabhouh’s assassination. At a memorial rally in Gaza, Hamas militants vowed that the movement’s armed wing, Izz-el Deen al-Qassam, “will never rest until they reach his killers”.
Mossad is supposed to gather intelligence, not sow death: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
Let’s suppose the Dubai assassination project had worked out well. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh would have received his kiss of death, the assassins would have returned safe and sound to their bases, and no Israeli would have run into identity complications. And then? Mahmoud’s place would have been taken by Mohammed, who also would have tried to kill Israeli soldiers and smuggle Iranian arms into Gaza. Perhaps the heir would even outperform his predecessor, as has happened in several previous liquidations.
We eliminated Abbas al-Musawi? Well done, Israel Defense Forces. We got Hassan Nasrallah. We killed Ahmed Yassin? Well done, Shin Bet security service. We got a Hamas many times stronger. Abu Jihad was eliminated? Well done to the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit – of course, according to foreign news reports. We killed a potential partner, relatively moderate and charismatic. As a bonus, we got revenge attacks like those after “the Engineer” Yihyeh Ayash was slain. We also got the danger hovering over every Israeli and Jew in the world each anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, which was also blamed on Israel.
Let’s suppose the Dubai operation had worked out well and the suspicion that the Mossad had a hand in it proved correct. Do we really want to live in a country that has death squads, that sends the cream of its youth to suffocate people with pillows in hotel rooms, that has a man who craves adventurous actions as head of its intelligence organization and a man who approves them as its prime minister?
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What do these liquidators tell their children when they get home safe and sound? That today they killed someone with a pillow? That they dressed up as tennis players, just like in the movies? And what do they say to themselves when they look in the mirror? That all’s fair and right in the war on terror? That they have made a contribution to the state’s security?
And what would have happened if they killed the wrong guy? It does happen. It happened in Lillehammer in 1973, for example. And what if their operation endangered Israelis and got the country into a mess?
Although assassinations are neither effective nor legal and sometimes not moral – when the target is a political leader or someone who could have been detained – we have not only awarded the assassins a kashrut certificate but also an aura of heroism. Oh, how proud we could have been of those stranglers of Dubai if they had only pulled off their mission without entangling some innocent Israelis whose identities were stolen.
How we love winking at each other and feeling proud of the Mossad, whose long arm can reach any hotel, according to foreign news reports. How we love being the Israeli Rambo, all blue and white, who long ago replaced the cartoon figure Srulik in his innocent kova tembel bucket hat as our image of who we are. Between you and me, what are we prouder of, the cherry tomatoes we developed here or assassinations?
There’s no difference between the assassins by the Border Police or the Duvdevan unit that kills wanted people in the occupied territories, and the daring hush-hush assassins of Dubai. The only debate since Dubai is about whether it was a snafu. But the real snafu is that assassinations have long been a legitimate weapon: no doubts and no questions asked, all without the true designation – executions.
Only a few weeks have passed since the finest security pundits were wallowing in well-orchestrated magazine cover stories and articles of appreciation for the head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan. These pieces almost totally ignored his dark past in Gaza and Lebanon and adulated his adventurism. We have long forgotten that the Mossad is supposed to be an intelligence-gathering organization, not one that sows death, and that a lawful state does not operate hit squads. To the roars of approval by the pundits, Dagan has just been given another year on job, his eighth. Why? Partly because he’s a specialist at liquidation.
But we shouldn’t complain about Dagan. He has the right to propose reckless operations to his heart’s desire, of the kind that will earn him and his organization compliments and budgets. The responsibility for liquidations lies with the person who approves them, namely Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who learned nothing from the Khaled Meshal fiasco in 1997 and has struck again (if indeed Israel did it) – yet another margin note for the debate about whether Bibi has changed, whether there’s a “new Netanyahu.”
We can believe that the Mossad actually carried out everything that has been ascribed to it, and we can even agree that Mabhouh deserved to die. It’s also possible to understand the desire to take revenge and punish him, as well as the need to combat weapons smuggling into Gaza. We can also continue ignoring, as is our wont, the motive for terrorism: the Israeli occupation. But after the liquidation of Mabhouh with a pillow, we are left in a country that not only dispatches assassins, but in which no questions are asked afterward.
EDITOR: Meanwhile, on the farm… the papers are all taken with the Dubai story, which is right and proper, but let us for one moment not assume that in Palestine things have been quiet, or better:
“At least there’s food in prison!”: The Electronic Intifada
Joy Ellison writing from al-Tuwani, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 17 February 2010
“This morning,” my neighbor Mona explained to me, “I told my husband that since the kids are out of school and he didn’t need to go into town, I would cook something special and we would have a party.” Mona has a wry sense of humor and I started to wonder what the punch line would be. “We were going to invite you, but instead we had a little party with the soldiers and the settlers.” Mona cocked her head to one side and shrugged, smiling ironically. Mona lives in the Palestinian village of al-Tuwani located in the occupied West Bank’s south Hebron hills.
The “party” we had in al-Tuwani wasn’t nearly as fun as the party that Mona had planned. At about 9am on 26 January, a settler from the Havot Maon settlement outpost entered the village, accompanied by the Israeli army and the Maon settlement security guard. The settler then entered the homes of my neighbors and searched in their animal pens. “What is he looking for?” my neighbors asked the soldiers. “If he thinks we’ve stolen something, bring the police and conduct a normal search. Where’s the rule of law?”
Between 15 and 20 settlers accompanied by more soldiers arrived. Mona’s husband tried to convince the soldiers to make the settlers leave the village. “We’ll go back into our houses if they leave,” he said. But then the settlers started throwing stones at a group of Palestinian women and children. The next thing I knew, the soldiers were pointing their guns at my neighbors. One of them drew back his fist and punched someone in the face. It was Mfadi, the quietest, least imposing man in the village. His nose was bleeding. Another soldier raised his gun and fired. For a moment I was stunned and dumbly wondered why no one seemed to be shot. Then I realized that he had fired a sound bomb and the soldiers were likely to start using tear gas next. I saw the same soldier pull out another canister. “Don’t do it,” I started screaming. “There are women and children here. Don’t shoot that!”
Later, when the soldiers and settlers had left the village, Mona told me that Mfadi’s nose was broken and he would need an operation. She also said that the soldiers told her and the women that if they did not leave the area, they would arrest all of the men of the village and kill at least one. “We didn’t leave,” said Mona. “One of the girls told them they could take her whole family to jail if they wanted to. She said that there was no food in her house. At least there’s food in prison!” Mona laughed.
Then Mona told me about the party she had wanted to have, until the settlers and soldiers prevented it. I started to wonder how many other parties were canceled because of the Israeli occupation that day. But then Mona smiled. “Maybe we’ll have our party tomorrow,” she said. Sure enough, the next afternoon I sat on Mona’s front porch laughing and sipping tea. As we ate the food that Mona had promised, I imagined the celebration she will throw when the occupation is finally over. Soldiers and settlers won’t be able to cancel that party — they can only postpone it.
The names of individuals in this story have been changed for their protection.
Joy Ellison is an American activist with Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organization that supports Palestinian nonviolent resistance. She lives in al-Tuwani, which is nonviolently resisting settlement expansion and violence. She writes about her experiences on her blog, “I Saw it in Palestine” at http://inpalestine.blogspot.com.
EDITOR: From inside the apartheid state
While to the tender eats of Gordon Brown and Irish Foreign Minister Martin, Israeli ambassadors are all honey and denial, in Israel there is not a dog left, who doubts the authorship of the murder in Dubai. This is how they write about it in Israel. Can someone send a link to Gordon Brown, perchance?
Confidant says Mossad chief won’t quit over Dubai hit: Ynet
Meir Dagan’s associate says Mossad will quietly lobby counterpart agencies in Britain, Ireland, Germany and France to mellow their governments’ scrutiny on Israel over al-Mabhouh assassination
Mossad chief Meir Dagan sees no reason to resign over a scandal-fraught assassination in Dubai, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unlikely to ask him to, a confidant of the Israeli spymaster said on Thursday.
While Israel has declined to comment on the Jan. 20 slaying of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) named the suspected killers, including several who had copied the European passports of actual immigrants to Israel.
Discerning a Mossad modus operandi and predicting a stink over the trans-national identity thefts, some Israeli pundits suggested Dagan would be forced to step down — like predecessor Danny Yatom in 1997 after a botched assassination in Jordan.
But the confidant, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters: “Dagan has no intention of quitting before his tenure is completed.”
Resignation would be tantamount to taking responsibility, the confidant said. The hotel-room hit on Mabhouh was dressed up as death by natural causes but was uncovered more than a week later when UAE police launched a murder probe at Hamas’s urging.
Dagan, a former general, was appointed in 2002 with a mandate to take the fight to Israel’s foes abroad. He won plaudits from successive prime ministers and an unusually long eight-year term.
The Mossad chief’s success in other and ongoing operations against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran would outweigh any desire by Netanyahu to have him fall on his sword, said the confidant, who also hails from Israel’s intelligence community.
“There are national priorities here,” the confidant said.
‘Regular turnover at the top needed’
Instead, the confidant anticipated Mossad would quietly lobby counterpart agencies in Britain, Ireland, Germany and France — the countries whose passports were used for the Dubai mission — to mellow their governments’ scrutiny on Israel.
“This may not work, given the anger that some of these foreign ministries are signaling,” the confidant said. “But even if there’s only a process of internal deliberation, that might be enough to take the sting out of the recrimination.”
In his first term as premier, Netanyahu approved Yatom’s plan to poison Hamas head Khaled Mashaal in Amman. The Mossad assassins, posing as Canadians, fumbled the attack and were arrested by Jordan after seeking refuge at the Israeli embassy.
Israel had to make amends, such as with Yatom’s resignation, “because in that case, our men were prisoners, which meant both proof of involvement and that concrete action was required to recover them”, the confidant said.
Netanyahu was also mindful of the need to repair relations with Jordan, one of two Arab nations to have recognized Israel. By contrast, the UAE has no formal ties with the Jewish state, though it does admit select Israelis for trade, sport or talks.
Israel’s most pressing domestic blowback from Dubai appears to be in the prospect that the seven of its citizens unwittingly identified as suspects could be subject to prosecution abroad.
“This could complicate things for Dagan, though the real legal risks are not at all clear yet,” the confidant said.
Dagan, 64, is scheduled to retire at the end of the year. While Netanyahu could seek cabinet endorsement to keep him on longer, the confidant described that as improbable:
“There was already some grumbling about his last extension. It doesn’t matter how good you are — no one’s immune from complacency. A security agency, like any corporation, needs a regular turnover at the top to keep its edge.”
Ireland: Dubai hit put our citizens at risk: Ynet
FM Martin says scheduled meeting with Israeli ambassador to Dublin will be ‘frank’; claims use of forged Irish passports by al-Mabhouh assassins jeopardized security of two citizens
Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin said Thursday that the recent assassination of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai had jeopardized the security of two Irish citizens due to the assassins’ alleged use of their passport details.
Martin told RTE Radio’s Morning Ireland that his office, in collaboration with local security agencies, was trying to locate a third Irish citizen whose identity had been stolen by the Dubai hit squad.
Leading UK newspapers filled with reports, commentaries on assassins’ alleged use of British passports in killing of al-Mabhouh; The Times says Israel ‘has a right to protect itself,’ while Daily Telegraph columnist quotes former MI6 officer as saying Mossad has ‘twisted ideals, total lack of respect for human life’
An Irish Foreign Ministry spokesman said the two people, who live in Ireland, were shocked to learn that their passport numbers had been used.
Martin said the affair is being taken very seriously and a frank discussion will take place with Israeli Ambassador to Dublin Zion Evrony, adding that it appears that the passport numbers were randomly stolen from older, pre-2005 passports.
The British Foreign Office has also summoned the Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, to discuss the use of British passports by the alleged killers of al-Mabhouh.
It has been widely reported that Mossad agents were behind the assassination.
On Wednesday Martin announced that further information had been received from the authorities in the United Arab Emirates concerning reports of the use of fake Irish passports in Dubai. He said the new information confirms that the passports used were fraudulent.
“Genuine Irish passport numbers were used. These numbers correspond to actual numbers on three legitimate Irish passports. However, the identities of the persons recorded on the forged passports do not correspond to those recorded on the valid passports carrying the same numbers,” he said.
RTE quote former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell as saying that Israeli involvement in the hit would be ‘a serious violation of trust between nations’.
“Given the current speculation, the Israeli government has some explaining to do and the ambassador should be summoned to the Foreign Office to do so in double-quick time,” he said.
Dubai Hamas killing pledge by UK foreign secretary: BBC
Britain is determined to “get to the bottom of” how fake UK passports were used by the alleged killers of a Hamas commander, the foreign secretary says.
David Miliband described the use of six British passports as an “outrage”.
Dubai’s police chief has said he is 99% sure of the involvement of Israeli agents in Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s death, but Israel says there is no proof.
Its UK ambassador said he was “unable to add additional information” after he met the UK diplomatic service’s head.
David Miliband vows to “get to the bottom” of how the alleged killers of a Hamas leader used fake UK passports in what he calls an “outrage”
Diplomatic tensions have mounted since the killing at a luxury Dubai hotel last month, which police said allegedly involved 11 European passport holders.
‘Tough questions’
The Irish Republic has called in Israeli ambassador Zion Evrony, and France has also demanded explanations over the use of a false passport.
Mr Miliband said he “hoped and expected” Tel Aviv would co-operate fully with the investigation announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The inquiry will seek to explain how passports bearing the names of six British-Israelis, who are not the men pictured, came to be used.
Israel’s secret service, Mossad, has been accused of involvement in the killing in Dubai on 20 January.
Mr Miliband refused to reveal what was said in the 20-minute meeting between Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor and Sir Peter Ricketts, the head of the UK’s diplomatic service.
Speaking on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2, he said: “It’s very, very important that we don’t make accusations until we know that they’re well founded.”
He added: “Any interference with British passports is an outrage. We take this case extremely seriously – the integrity of our system is critical.”
Mr Prosor told journalists after his meeting that it is “not the usual way to talk about what happens in those meetings”.
In Dublin, Israeli ambassador Zion Evrony also insisted he knew nothing about the killing of the Hamas commander.
The Ambassador said that he had no information on the matter and would relay the messages he had received to his authorities.
British Conservative leader David Cameron called for Israel’s ambassador to the UK to be asked “some pretty tough questions”.
Meanwhile, shadow foreign secretary William Hague has urged the Foreign Office to confirm when it first knew about the fake passport claims.
UK diplomats said they had received details of the British passports a few hours before Dubai released details on Monday.
However, Mr Hague told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was “entirely possible” the government had been alerted to their use in January.
“There have been reports in the Gulf, including one in the Gulf News, right at the end of January, that the head of police in Dubai had contacted consulates and embassies for assistance with this investigation into the suspects,” he said.
The BBC’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen said if there was proof Israel had used British passports “for some nefarious uses of its Mossad service – as they have in the past with Canadian and New Zealand ones”, then relations between the UK and Israel would be “in a crisis”.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency has confirmed photographs and signatures on the passports used in Dubai do not match those on passports issued by the UK.
The men whose names appeared on the passports have dual British and Israeli citizenship.
They are Melvyn Adam Mildiner, Paul John Keeley, James Leonard Clarke, Stephen Daniel Hodes, Michael Lawrence Barney and Jonathan Lewis Graham. They all deny involvement in the killing.
HAMAS KILLING
Police in Dubai are hunting 11 people they believe are behind the killing of a senior Hamas commander. The suspects are accused of using fake passports bearing their own pictures, but the names of innocent Europeans.
The details of the suspects and their passport photos were released by officials in Dubai earlier this week.
The Irish government has said passports used by three people believed to have been involved in killing a Hamas member had genuine numbers.
However, authorities said while the numbers were legitimate, they did not match records for the names which had been used – Gail Folliard, Evan Dennings and Kevin Daveron.
Dublin’s Department of Foreign Affairs said officials were urgently trying to contact the three citizens who hold or have held passports with these numbers.
In a statement it said it took “grave exception” to the forgery, which could potentially put at risk the safety of Irish citizens travelling abroad.
France – and reportedly Germany – have raised doubts over the identities of two suspects who used a French and a German passport.
France’s foreign ministry Bernard Valero said he was “demanding explanations” from the Israeli embassy in France about the circumstances of the use of a false French passport in the Dubai killing.
Reports have suggested the Hamas commander was in Dubai to buy weapons for the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas.
Two Palestinian suspects were being questioned about the murder. Police said they had “fled to Jordan” after the killing and have not released their names.
Officials in Dubai, who have issued arrest warrants, said the team appeared to be a professional hit squad, probably sponsored by a foreign power.
“It is 99%, if not 100%, sure that Mossad is standing behind the murder,” Dubai police chief General Dahi Khalfan is quoted as saying by an Abu Dhabi-based English-language paper.
The Respect MP George Galloway said assurances from Israel could not be trusted as the “rogue state” had broken its word in the past.