Hit on Hamas Man in Dubai Spawns Debate in Israel

JERUSALEM (Feb. 17) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stressed that Israel has a "policy of ambiguity" on intelligence matters as the mystery deepened over who was behind the elaborate assassination in Dubai last month of a senior Hamas official.

Six British-Israelis and one American-Israeli say they were victims of identity theft after Dubai police published their names and passport numbers in connection with the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was discovered in his hotel room on Jan. 20.

Israeli newspapers today published photographs of the alleged assassins next to pictures of the real British-Israelis. There were few similarities. The British Foreign Office has opened an investigation into how the dual nationals' passports were stolen, and British media report that the government has summoned the Israeli ambassador to the Foreign Office on Thursday to discuss the matter.

"From the moment I heard about it I've been worried for my family," Paul John Keeley, a British-born repairman who lives on a kibbutz in northern Israel, told the Ha'aretz newspaper. "The fact that it was my name that was published in this context makes me worry that someone will try to harm us."

Keeley, a 43-year-old father of three, said he has not been abroad recently and has never visited Dubai. He said his passport has never been out of his possession.

Lieberman says the fact that passports of Israeli citizens were used does not prove that Israel was behind the hit. "There is no reason to think that it was the Israeli Mossad, and not some other intelligence service or country up to some mischief," the foreign minister said when asked about the operation and the identity theft.

The daughter of American-Israeli Michael Bodenheimer, whose name was on a German passport, told Ha'aretz that her father is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who studies full-time in a Jewish religious seminary.

"At first we didn't understand what everyone was talking about," she said. "The picture that was published doesn't look like him at all. He busies himself with Torah study."

According to the Dubai police, six people with British passports, three with Irish passports and one each from France and Germany all were filmed in the Dubai hotel where al-Mabhouh was killed. All of them flew in on different flights and were in the country less than 19 hours.

Ireland's department of foreign affairs said that the three Irish passport holders, including one woman, accused of taking part in the assassination do not exist. A spokesman also said the numbers did not correspond to any Irish passport numbers.

The fact that the assassins used Israeli identities increased suspicion on Israel. But Israeli officials were quick to point out that other countries or groups would benefit from al-Mabhouh's assassination. The Dubai police chief said two Palestinians had also been arrested. A spokesman for Hamas in Gaza said he believed the two were from the rival Fatah movement, although he later retracted the statement.

Al-Mabhouh was known to be a conduit for supplying Iranian arms to Hamas in Gaza. Soon after the killing, Hamas blamed Israel and threatened revenge attacks.

"The Mossad was not behind the assassination but rather a foreign organization that is trying to frame Israel," Rafi Eitan, a former senior Mossad official, told Israel Radio today.

Meanwhile, Ha'aretz reported that a preliminary investigation by Hamas suggests the hit "was likely carried out by agents of an Arab government, and not by Israel's Mossad spy agency." The report says that al-Mabhouh had enemies not only in the rival Palestinian movement of Fatah, but also in Egypt and Jordan.

As the mystery has deepened, some Israeli commentators criticized Mossad for precipitating a potential diplomatic crisis with Britain and Ireland for using the identities of British Israelis. One prominent commentator, Amir Oren in the Ha'aretz newspaper, called for Mossad head Meir Dagan to be fired. Oren wrote that the operation bears a striking similarity to a botched attempt to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Jordan in 1997.

"If the perpetrators were from the Mossad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be walking around with an acute sense of déjà vu," he wrote. "Once again, an assassination of a senior Hamas leader in a friendly Arab country, once again an operation designed to kill someone quietly and inconspicuously; once again a diplomatic mess; and once again it is all happening on Netanyahu's watch."

Israel has apologized to several foreign countries, including Canada and New Zealand, for using passports of their foreign nationals in previous incidents.