ANALYSIS:Has the response by European governments been 'shy'? And why are states not investigating leads provided by the Dubai police?
IT BEGAN, as is so often the case in the Middle East, with whisperings. Rumours that European passports had been used by the alleged assassins of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas official suspected by Israel of smuggling arms from Iran, first surfaced just days after the Palestinian's body was found in his Dubai hotel room. Before long the speculation made it to print, and on February 4th, the first mention that Irish passports were implicated appeared in the Khaleej Times, an English-language newspaper distributed throughout the Gulf.
But it wasn’t until February 15th, when Dubai’s police chief named 11 suspects, including three ostensible Irish passport holders, and hinted at further revelations to come, that the scale of the operation began to become apparent. Last week, true to their “drip, drip” approach to releasing information about the assassination, the Dubai authorities named a further 15 people they believe were involved, bringing the total number of suspects to 26. The case has developed into a major international intrigue worthy of a John Le Carré spy thriller. The alleged hit squad used cloned passports from five countries; 12 British, six Irish, four French, three Australian and one German; and credit cards issued by a US bank.
From the outset, the finger of blame has been pointed at Israel and its intelligence service Mossad. After all, Mossad has plenty of form when it comes to what Israelis call “targeted killings”. And jubilant media coverage of the assassination in Israel, working on the assumption that this was a Mossad job, was telling. As was opposition leader Tzipi Livni’s cheering of the assassination as “good news to those fighting terrorism”.
But Israel still refuses to confirm or deny involvement. After Dubai’s police chief declared he was “99 per cent” certain that the spy agency orchestrated the hit, Israeli officials merely responded that there was no hard evidence this was the case.
What is known is that a number of the 15 new suspects named last week travelled to Dubai on passports bearing the names of people resident in Israel. Several of the eight – like the six British-Israeli dual nationals whose names were used by the first 11 suspects – have said their identities were used without their permission.
Late last week Israeli media claimed the passport photographs used by the alleged assassination team were subtly doctored to ensure they could not be recognised later. This revelation was interpreted by some as an attempt to deflect mounting criticism of Mossad within Israel for exposing both its agents and those whose identities they had assumed.
Israel’s bullish foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman appears to have shrugged off the concerns of the five countries implicated, citing Israel’s “policy of ambiguity’ on intelligence and security matters. In Brussels last week, after meeting EU counterparts including Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, Lieberman appeared quite blase about what some have described as a serious diplomatic rift. “I think you have all seen too many James Bond movies,” he quipped to reporters.
A member of the Hamas politburo griped to The Irish Timesthat the response from the European countries whose passports had been implicated had been too "shy" and he argued that if any other country had been suspected of fraudulently using the documentation of another to carry out an assassination the reaction would be very different. Opposition deputies here have accused the Government of being too timid in the way it has handled allegations of Israeli complicity.
The most robust response yet to the entire debacle, and the most explicit in implying that Israel was likely to have been responsible, has come from Australia. Its foreign minister Stephen Smith has demanded co-operation from Israel in investigating the identity theft: “If the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of Australian passports was sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend”. Prime minister Kevin Rudd later said he was “not satisfied” with the Israeli ambassador’s responses to Australian concerns and warned his government would be taking an “absolutely hard line” in defending its passports’ integrity.
All this is unfolding against a background of creeping anxiety within Israel that a point has been reached where it can no longer take international support and goodwill for granted. The damning UN-commissioned Goldstone report, which alleged war crimes were committed during Israel’s military offensive in Gaza last year, came on the heels of boycott calls and widespread protests over the deaths of 1,200 Gazans during the fighting. In Britain, arrest warrants have been issued against Israeli politicians.
Israeli officials admit that, while support remains at government level in Europe, public opinion of their country has plummeted to an all-time low.
Moshe Feiglin, president of Manhigut Yehudit, the largest faction inside Israel’s ruling Likud party, acknowledged these new realities in an acerbic commentary on the Mabhouh killing. “Somebody in the Mossad and the echelon that authorised the Mabhouh mission is still living in the 1980s. They didn’t notice that the Western world, and particularly the British, no longer sees Israel as the good guy in the story,” Feiglin wrote. “In the eyes of much of the world, Israel is no more than a pirate ship sailing on borrowed time . . . The world has changed . . . Israel can no longer expect the international community to wink its eye and look the other way.”
Israel is not likely to lose sleep over a chilling of relations with Ireland as a result of the passports controversy. Israeli officials, after all, are pretty much resigned to what they view as Irish antipathy. "Ireland . . . is currently one of the European countries most antagonistic to Israel, and a country where the hostility of the press is matched by the tone of the Government," a columnist in the Jerusalem Postwrote during the conflict in Gaza last year. Earlier this month, another writer at the paper described Ireland as a country where "Israel's name is routinely dragged through the mud".
So far European focus has been on the fraudulent use of passports. But Dubai police say the trails of the alleged killers begin and end in five European states: France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Why the apparent reluctance to investigate? Mahmoud al-Mabhouh may have been an unsavoury character in the eyes of many but Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, argues that European countries would be wrong to ignore or wish away the wider implications of his assassination. “If a foreign intelligence agency was responsible . . ., the matter should clearly be classified as an extrajudicial execution,” he said. “All states have an unquestioned obligation to investigate and prosecute anyone accused of a killing who they have reason to believe is within their jurisdiction. Political considerations can never be invoked to avoid taking the necessary action.”
Mary Fitzgerald is Foreign Affairs Correspondent