Britain to Expel Israeli Diplomat Over Dubai Case
By JOHN F. BURNS
LONDON — In a rare move by a friendly government, Britain expelled an Israeli diplomat on Tuesday to rebuke the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the suspected use of a dozen fake British passports in the assassination of a Hamas official in a Dubai hotel earlier this year.
"Such misuse of British passports is intolerable," the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, said in remarks to the House of Commons. "The fact that this was done by a friendly country only adds insult to injury."
He called Israel's actions "completely unacceptable" and said "they must stop."
The British decision to expel an Israeli diplomat is a new turn in Israel's recent frictions with its closest Western allies, after a cooling of ties with the United States in the wake of the Netanyahu government's decision this month to approve new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.
Mr. Miliband did not identify the Israeli diplomat, but British news reports speculated that he was the London station chief of Mossad, Israel's overseas spy agency.
Officials in Dubai have accused Mossad of being behind the Jan 20 slaying of the Hamas operative, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in a luxury hotel room there.
The Dubai officials say they have identified at least 26 suspects of a suspected Israeli hit squad that traveled to Dubai on fake identities and forged British, Irish, French, German and Australian passports. Interpol has issued a wanted list of 27 people in connection with the slaying.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any involvement in Mr. Mabhouh's killing, but Israeli officials have described the slain Palestinian as an important figure in Hamas terrorist operations against Israel, and said that he was deeply involved in an arms-smuggling operation that was used to support Hamas terrorist operations based in Gaza against Israel civilians.
Diplomatic expulsions are rare between allies with relationships as close as Britain and Israel, lending a special significance to the British decision to expel the London-based diplomat. Diplomats said it would be the first time a British government has expelled an Israeli diplomat since Britain expelled an Israeli Embassy attaché in June 1988.
On that occasion, the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ordered the expulsion of a Mossad agent, Arie Regev, after he was linked to a double-agent operation run by the spy agency in Britain that involved a Jerusalem-born Palestinian conducting covert surveillance on behalf of Mossad. That case, too, involved a Mossad undercover operation that was suspected of planning the assassination of a suspected Palestinian hit man who had been active in Britain.
Israel's construction plans in East Jerusalem were likely to be a main topic of a scheduled White House meeting later Tuesday between Mr. Netanyahu andPresident Obama.
Officials at 10 Downing Street said that Israel's ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, met Monday with Peter Ricketts, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Office and Britain's senior diplomat, to discuss the case. Israel's Foreign Ministry declined to provide details of the talks.
The Associated Press reported that Mr. Miliband had been due to attend a reception later on Tuesday to mark the renovation of the Israeli embassy building in London, but would not now be present.
The agency quoted an embassy spokesman as having declined to comment on the expulsion. "We can neither confirm nor deny," the spokesman told the A.P., speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media on the issue.
News reports quoting British officials since the Dubai killing have said that at least 15 of the names used by those involved in Mr. Mabhouh's killing matched those of Israeli citizens who are dual nationals of Western countries — including eight Israeli-British dual nationals. All have denied involvement, saying their identities had been stolen.
On Tuesday, Mr. Miliband said the owners of the 12 passports were "wholly innocent victims" and said they would be issued new passports.
It was not clear how reports that 12 faked British passports were used in the operation correlated with earlier accounts that only eight of the Dubai hit squad held British citizenship.
But other aspects of the Dubai operation have been dramatically exposed by the Dubai authorities' action in releasing video sequences that the Dubai officials said were taken from the Dubai hotel's surveillance cameras. One sequence showed two men identified by Dubai as members of the assassination team dressed in sports clothes, one of them carrying a tennis racquet, as they followed Mr. Mabhouh and a female hotel concierge holding his plastic room key emerging from an elevator.
Officials in South Africa have said that several members of the Israeli hit team left Dubai for Johannesburg on a direct flight by Emirates Airline, the Dubai flag carrier, then flew back to various destinations in Europe before catching connecting flights back to Israel.
South African news reports have quoted South African officials as saying that they were unable to comply with Dubai's request for closed-circuit video recordings taken as the men transited through Oliver Tambo International airport in Johannesburg because the recordings had been mysteriously wiped before the Dubai request was made.
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