Arab News Editorial: Israel's Plot thickening

Plot thickening

There can now be little doubt the Israeli secret service was behind last month's assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in his Dubai hotel room. The men who ordered the killing left an embarrassing fingerprint on their crime. Six of the people whose real passports were cloned for the killers' use are British citizens currently living in Israel. The Mossad obviously decided it was easy to steal the details of these individuals.

As a result, the Israeli crime is having wider ramifications with European governments calling in Israeli ambassadors and demanding an explanation of how this falsification of their passports came about.

It should be said, however, that the British in particular have so far acted in a notably pusillanimous manner. Instead of demanding Israel's ambassador in London visit the Foreign Office, he was very gently invited. Since as expected, he had been briefed to give nothing away, Thursday's meeting appears to have been fruitless. All that was left behind was a meaningless promise to cooperate with the British authorities as they investigate the passport fraud.

British Foreign Minister David Milliband, as usual, stuck to the legal niceties by refusing to even speculate publicly who might have been responsible for the passport stunt, until a police enquiry by the Serious Organized Crime Office has been completed. Will it be a very British calm before a very serious political storm? Some recall that in 1987, London protested Mossad's attempted use of another eight forged British passports. After that incident, the British were given a solemn undertaking by the Israelis that it would never happen again.

Even though some pro-Zionists British politicians and civil service mandarins might like to sweep under the carpet this egregious manifestation of Israeli bad faith, the reality is that public opinion in the UK, already deeply disturbed by Israeli barbarity in Gaza, is in no mood to let this matter go. Thursday some London newspapers were questioning the double standards of a supposedly friendly state. The Israelis made much of their adherence to the rule of law yet were clearly prepared to steal and falsify documents of other countries. Moreover, they are ready to murder opponents when it suits them, even though this makes them no better than the men they claim are terrorists.

An Israeli professor of politics was Thursday seeking to shamelessly justify the Dubai murder, assuming, he added quickly, that Mossad had indeed done it because of the lives he claimed Al-Mabhouh's elimination has saved. Supposing Hamas got wind of the planned Israeli bombardment of Gaza and sent a hit team to slay the Israeli Army's chief operational planner when he was staying in an overseas hotel. Would that also be no crime because of the lives that it might have saved?  The immorality of Israel's smugness at its own murderous behavior would be fully demonstrated by the howls of protests that would have followed such an "outrageous crime".

Now, therefore, is the time for European governments betrayed by this passport fraud to take real action to punish Israel. But the Europeans should remember that the real crime is murder, not passport fraud. They should also remember the moral indignation with which the US and UK would have reacted and the dire threats followed if the suspects were the intelligence agencies of any other Middle East