Israel reels from backlash at killing of Hamas militant
Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 10:10PM THE INDEPENDENT
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.
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