Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely

Jonathan Spyer
International/JPost
18 February '10

The evidence suggesting that British passports were used by members of the team responsible for killing Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is causing concern at the possibility of a new diplomatic row between Israel and the UK. Such a row would come at a time of already strained relations between the two countries, because of the failure of the British government to take firm action to end the possibility of the arrest of Israeli officials in Britain on suspicion of ‘war crimes.’

Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to carry out a full investigation into the affair. A British Foreign Office Spokesman quoted earlier in the London Daily Telegraph earlier this week said that the authorities “believe the passports used were fraudulent and have begun our own investigation.” If the killers of Mabhouh were indeed Israelis, the unauthorized use of foreign passports will come as no surprise. It has been a much noted aspect in the known operations of Israel’s external intelligence services in recent years.

The two men apprehended following the failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Amman in 1997, for example, were found to be carrying forged Canadian passports. A diplomatic row also erupted between Israel and New Zealand in 2004, after two Israeli citizens were convicted of passport fraud in Auckland. The case resulted in the suspension of top-level contacts between the two countries for a short period of time. Israel is understood to have offered guarantees to the authorities of both countries that their documents would not be used in future operations.

Some reports in the British media have raised additional questions over the future of British-Israeli intelligence sharing in light of the latest incident.

The British and Israeli intelligence services are thought to cooperate closely in a variety of areas of common interest – including on the Iranian nuclear program, and in the fight against Sunni ‘Global Jihad’ organizations. The warnings of major diplomatic fallout are probably overblown.

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